Renovating my first home | Construction and DIY projects | Forums

Here was the living room before the previous owners moved out

Ignore the wide angle lens and all that. It's a small room (small house really). We wanted to change the paint color and I hated the fireplace. My wife was OK with it. It's fully indoors, not something I've seen before. I had hoped there might by brick under the paneling.

Angle to show how huge this sucker is, which is why I wanted it either gone or slimmed down

From the front--paneling was old and not as pretty as in the listing photos

Nope, no brick... damn it. No way to slim it down either

Since I was an idiot and knocked holes in the wall (against my dad's advice), we had to re-drywall the top. First time hanging drywall, and on uneven old framing! Woo.

I wanted stone but didn't want to make this fireplace any larger than it was.

We went with a porcelain tile made to look like stone. It already matched the paint color we had chosen so it was an easy choice.

Notice the strip where we didn't go all the way to the top, where the mantel will rest. That was a mistake. We thought the mantel would cover it. It didn't so we had to recut little strips to put there.

The red clay tile at the base couldn't stay, so we ripped it out

And replaced it with 12x12 tile that I hope matches the stone facade

The walls now came out about an extra half inch, so we couldn't re-use the old moulding or the old mantel. As a cheap stand-in until I can afford a better mantel, we just bought a 2x8 and cut it to fit. We couldn't decide on a color. I thought a real dark wood stain would look nice, the wife thought wood wouldn't go well with grey stone in a grey room so she wanted a grey mantel. We tried the grey by painting a piece of the old mantel.

At the end of the day, I stuck with the brown. She got her emerald kitchen, I got my brown mantel. Even for now.

That was earlier today. We got the mantel put on and I forgot to snap a finished pic. Will do that after work tomorrow.

We didn't have the tools to cut the crown moulding to cover the top. I spent the $28 on the piece of moulding, and ruined it thinking I was a geometry wizard who could make it work without a miter saw. Turns out I can't. Tried cutting them at 45 degree angles and that was way too steep. So I recut them at 33 degrees and that wasn't steep enough, they didn't touch. Whatever, a buddy of mine's father does woodworking so he is coming by this week and says he'll teach me.

Here's the last part of this stupid fireplace. All in all it took us 3 days from start to finish. Not bad IMO for my first big project.

Tomorrow we are taking a look at the basement to start drywalling and finishing it. Will be moving in upstairs this week as well as hanging the drywall downstairs. Should be fun.