Blog

When we tore off the paneling and discovered pine wall boards, I was thrilled. I knew I had to have (at least one) wood wall. My husband did not immediately agree, but I was able to convince him that a feature wall would be amazing.In this photo you see a naïve young woman with a vision. Perseverance, sweat, sanding and varnish would mean that years later that dream came true.

We got some tiles at Habitat for Humanity last year. They were a sandy beige color and matched with our countertop quite nicely. Turned out though, that they were the cheap tiles, so they were all slightly different sizes. We ended up not using them on the floor and they've been sitting in the 'big room'.

And we need a backsplash. I'm using the kitchen every day now, and I already noticed a few splashes on the wall behind the counter. Instead of doing regular tile, even those really pretty trendy new small glass tiles (which in 20 years will probably make someone say omg that is so 2010's), I'd like to do something a little artistic.

I've had this idea in the back of my mind to break those uneven 'cheap' tiles into triangular type pieces of different sizes and make a backsplash out of them. I'd also like to put in some of the beautiful 'river rock' that is all around this area. A lot of river rock has a great orangey brown hue that I think will look nice in the kitchen. And they're so smooth and flat.

I'm glad I finally realized this was in my head and got it out. I started looking for images as a backup to prove to PJ that this is a) feasible b)plausible and c) not just some kookamaney idea that his artsy wife came up with.

Here are some of those images, and a few more that aren't like what my vision looks like, just 'cause I liked them so much. :)

This last one and the USA map one are my favourites.

Hopefully I can get approval for this project! Wish me luck!

We ordered our cabinets from Louie Slape Custom Cabinetry. They were ready within less than two weeks.

We chose ash, a very light wood. They installed them for us. Here is what they look like so far.

The reason the doors are not up is because we decided to finish the cabinets (stain/varnish) ourselves. This has turned out to be a LOT of work. I've also included a picture of the cabinet doors and drawers sitting on the floor with their first coat of varnish on. They need three coats and have to be sanded between each coat.

In this last picture, you can see that I also painted the final living room wall a light turqoise color.

The walls are painted. I did this weeks ago. Here are pictures.

<strong>kitchen</strong>

In the past month and 3/4s, it feels like we haven't accomplished very much. But we have!  Or shall I make that I have? The man has been working in the business, and I've been working on the business of getting this house ready to sell. This summer, we are putting the house back together, and it feels like one step back, two steps forward. (Last summer was deconstruction and it felt like two steps back, one step forward).

We're living there, and it's difficult, but not as difficult as last year. We've had a kitchen sink, and that makes things a lot easier. But we brought out a lot of stuff to enable living and we've been moving stuff around a lot in order to accomplish stuff.

Anyhow, so the next few posts will cover what we've done since May.

Fireplace

Choosing the colors for the fireplace was really hard. The colors of the fireplace would have to match up with the walls. And we had to come to agreement on the color of the walls. I won't get into this too much, but let's just say we didn't see eye to eye on this. In the end, I drew up waay too many samples of possible color combinations and we drew squares anonymously around the ones we liked. Ones we both liked were entered into the finals. Here are the finals. The top left choice was the winner. I was inspired by paint name colors to name each color scheme. It was fun. One thing that made the fireplace look really good was a circle mirror on the top part of the fireplace. I tried other shapes and this looks the best. Another thing that made the fireplace look good was adding a mantle all the way across the fireplace. I thought it might make it look bigger, but it looks pretty good. 

That decided, I was ready to plunge blindly forward. The general idea was to mix up a few different shades of maroon, splotch them on the bricks to make a few background colors and then coat it with a color. It took about 6-7 hours all together, but this is partly because I used a paintbrush for the first three hours. Then I got wise, put some more plastic on the (already painted) ceiling and rollered the thing. Last stage was to paint the mortar. I was very pleased with the results.

Stage 1

This is the fireplace after I cleaned it.

I put some splotches on.

And here it is after I painted the whole thing. I still have to finish the grout lines on the bottom half.

We transitioned pretty quickly to floor sanding, so there is a big table on the hearth right now, but when that's gone, I'll add another pic.

We went out to the house again today to wait for the plumber (for more on our frozen water pipes, see our previous post: House Redux). The plumber had to reschedule, but while we were waiting, we got quite a bit done. Another round of grass cutting for PJ, with the lawnmower set lower to the ground this time. Oh, and he spent 3 hrs on the phone with AT&T but that's another story. For me, some sweeping. And tidying up. I was really quite pleased, hardly any bugs (of any sort) inside the house. Smelled great almost everywhere, except for where the pipes burst (wet wood). While I was sweeping, I envisioned the walls with drywall on. And paint on the drywall, and kitchen cupboards and sanded/varnished floors and the big ugly stained beige fireplace all cleaned up and...Hmm...fireplace.

Fireplace Ideas

So this:

is the fireplace the way it looks now (minus the walls, which have been stripped down to the original wide wood lathes). The wall on the left ends at the edge of the photo. As you can see, the fireplace is very overpowering on this wall. It takes up over half of the wall area, on a wall in a dark corner, with a relatively low ceiling (8', pretty standard). There's also the clash of the horizontal lines of the brick mortar and the vertical lines on the paneling (which is thankfully gone so no more problem there!) I think you'll agree that there's something awkward about the whole thing. My hypothesis is that the width of the fireplace seems to make the ceiling appear lower.

I've thought of a few ways to make the wall look taller and make the area look brighter. We have already decided to paint the walls a very light warm beige. I'm sooo not a beige person, but in this case, I think it's right. This is a north-facing room, so the light that comes in is filtered and bluish. The beige should warm it up and we are pretty set on it, though not the exact tone.

Stain vs. Paint

When doing my research on the internet, I found that a lot of people actually like the light brick look and are restoring their fireplaces to that look using specially produced multi-tint paint kits. As for paint, quite a few people think it's okay to paint a fireplace white (most other colours are frowned upon). A shock white fireplace would be nice, but it would stand out more. Standing out is not what we want for this one. So stain it is. I also like the idea of stain better than paint, because it will keep the natural rough organic textured look for each brick, whereas painted bricks tend to be smoother and glossier looking.

Tone it down...

My main idea to visually minimize the fireplace is to paint or stain the fireplace in the same colour tone as the walls, to (hopefully) make it blend in and feel less overpowering. Using a lighter shade on the walls and a slightly darker shade on the brick should make the walls look larger and the fireplace smaller. Here is what that might look like:

Not too different from the way we found it, except the dark and light colours are inverted, which could make all of the difference in the world to make the fireplace looks slightly smaller. We could also try it with an even darker colour, like so:

I kind of like this one, but I think light still wins. A dark stain would look rich and cozy, but kind of heavy and it's kind of personal, which probably isn't good for a potential buyer.

And here's what I think will really work to make this fireplace look nice:

Stain/paint the fireplace a color very similar to the wall. Put two little dark shelves on it to make it less symmetrical and give an optical illusion of height. Add paint or trim or a metal sheet above the fireplace opening to add verticality and cover up the darkest stains. Use different sized lights on either side to distract from the evenness of the behemoth and bring some brightness into this corner!

Or, to get really fancy:

This one is the same as above, but with added vertical stripes (paint? wood? mini shelves? decorations?) to bring the eye up even more. I've also added a fancily painted or metallic fireplace screen, which would carry over onto the hearth and lengthen the lines of the fireplace even more. But the easiest idea is probably what my husband suggested when he came by to see what I was working on. If I want to make the fireplace look slimmer, how about putting it on a diet, or maybe have it do some crunches! Silly! :)

Item  	%  	Total
Permits 	2% 	$80
Demolition 	2% 	$80
Framing 	2% 	$80
Plumbing 	2% 	$80
Electrical 	2% 	$80
Insulation 	2% 	$80
Drywall Patching 	1% 	$40
Flooring 	5% 	$200
Cabinetry 	50% 	$2,000
Countertops 	20% 	$800
Backsplashes 	2% 	$80
Appliances 	6% 	$240
Fixtures 	1% 	$40
Design 	2% 	$80
Paint 	1% 	$40
Total 	100% 	$4000