Our living room fireplace, easily one of the biggest eyesores in our home, took all of three hours to update, and I couldn’t be happier with the finished product!
Ever since we started looking at purchasing this home I had issues with the fireplace. It’s location is bizarre (it’s all the way to the right of the living room and edges the kitchen) and has a unique shape (notice how the left side is deeper than the right).
Though updating it wasn’t at the top of my priority list, I started realizing just how fast and cheap I could put a checkmark in this box.
So I got to work.
For the mantel, I purchased a quart of Sherwin Williams Pure White in a semi-gloss finish. I taped off the sides (where I needed to paint vertically) with green FrogTape, and got out my two painting tools – my “cut in” go-to brush (Premium XL Tight Spots 2″) and a mini-roller designed for cabinets and doors. That’s it! After a couple of quick coats, I stepped back and was satisfied.
After I pealed off the FrogTape, a little bit of paint had gotten on the tile (I hate tape for this reason), so I used a box cutter to flake off the extra paint.
After reading a couple of “how-to” posts regarding the brass, I swung over to Menards and picked up a quart of Rustoleum’s High Heat specialty paint in black.
When I got home, I did a quick wipe down of the whole fireplace to remove a ton of excess dirt and dust. Once it was completely dry, I painted one coat on the entire fireplace. Though I originally planned to just paint the brass portions, I decided to paint the whole thing to freshen up the entire space. Below are some of the before pics.
The only portion that got two coats was the brass section. I waited about four hours before applying the second coat.
The total cost for this update came in around $35 ($20ish for the white SW paint and $14 for the Rustoleum paint). I still have three quarters of a quart left of the white paint and the black paint doesn’t even look touched, so I’ll be adding them to our quickly-growing paint selection in the basement.
Also, I mentioned in my previous post that the paint we used for the living room/fireplace is Sherwin Williams Balanced Beige.
So now that we have the boring fireplace update out of the way (maybe it was helpful to somebody?), I hope you don’t mind if I show off a few pics of our fam at the pumpkin patch this weekend. We met my sister and BIL at Britt’s Farm here in Manhattan around 11 and enjoyed playing for about an hour. The wind was whippin’ so we skipped the hayride, but everything else was really fun. Going to the pumpkin patch as a kid with my family was always really fun, so I was overly excited to take Hadley.
Hadley’s mind is such a sponge, so Jamie and I really enjoy watching her take in every little thing she sees. Holidays and festive things are so much more fun with her around.
Hi! I’m Erica, and I absolutely adore sharing my life on this website with you! I come here almost daily to blab about all of the things related to being a regular wife and mother in today’s ever-evolving society. I share about our new home, what’s on our kitchen table, what we’re hanging in our closets, where we’re traveling to next, my crazy 5 a.m. work outs, how I make time for girlfriends, our faith, and much more. We always have a lot of balls in the air and somewhat thrive on the chaos. I believe in the power of story-telling as a form of inspiration and entertainment, so I’m here to do both! I was born and raised in north Alabama and recently re-planted roots here again after my husband transitioned out of the Army (he is now in the Reserve and it’s going so well!) I’m a super proud mom to three little girls (ages 7, 4, and 1) who seem to be the stars of the show around here (for good reason – they’re pretty great!) I’m so glad you found me and are here reading! I hope we can get to know each other here on the blog as well as Facebook and/or Instagram. xoxo