Almost Finished Product

Ok! Here it is. Cass and I, over the winter, did some work to the fireplace room that made some big changes to how the room looks now.

We bought some moulding to wrap the sliding door with. Since I had received a miter saw for Christmas, I decided there really was no good reason that I shouldn't finish that door so we could hang up some curtains and hopefully stop some of the warm air in the house from escaping through the great big glass wall in the family room. We painted the moulding the same color as the wall since it was mostly going to be covered by the curtains anyway. But wow, when we got that installed, it was amazing the difference. The room instantly looked and felt closer to being finished. I was really happy with how the miters turned out, too. Since I'd never done a mitered corner, I wasn't sure how they would turn out.

Cass and I used some of our Christmas gift money to buy some new curtains and a new rug for the room that went well with the colors we picked out for the fireplace wall which is a smoky blue and khaki for the other walls. We installed the curtains on a dual curtain rod setup so the blue panels and the brown panels are on separate curtain rods. That way they can retract farther to the right which makes using the sliding door a lot easier. It was awesome how similar the blue of the curtains was to the blue on our wall. Plus, it matched the blue in the awesome area rug we found. So, here's a good look at how the room looks now. We haven't installed the mantle, base boards, or crown moulding yet but we'll be starting those soon.

Still Working on the Fireplace

Well, Cass and I took a break from working on the fireplace room for a while, but I also forgot to blog about it. We got the Fireplace installed as you saw from my last post from November last year. Right after installing it, I had my Dad (Eaton) come over to help tile around the fireplace. We found this tile edge that you can use as a transition between carpet and tile since we wanted to have a foot wide hearth. So, I had to get hack saw to cut that stuff and boy was it scary cutting out that chunk of carpet. That was another "no turning back" moment!

Dad, my master tile installer, pretty much handled the tile installation while I helped when he needed a hand and he showed me how it works. I think it'd be cool to tile the Kitchen someday! Who knows? The tiling job seemed to go well, no major trouble. The biggest obstacle we faced was finding a way to hold up the tiles that were put in right above the fireplace itself. We didn't have any tiles below to support it, so we taped them to the wall and let them dry. It worked out good. Thankfully, it doesn't take too long for the mortar to dry, so we were able to continue. Cass and I picked out a special decorative tile to dress up the row of tile directly above the fireplace. Once we get the mantle up, it should look real nice. the hard part has actually been DOING the mantle. We haven't even started making it yet. I just recently got all the tools I think I'll need to do it, so we should be starting that soon. I'll try to blog about that a little sooner than it took me to get around to this, though!

Here's a few more pics from the day we installed the tile. I also put in a light fixture and Cass started priming the walls.








I'll post another entry soon showing everything we've done up to date on the room.

Happy Home Anniversary (to us!)

Can y'all believe it? Today marks the one year anniversary from the day we closed on our house. This year went by so quick, it's all a blur. I'm so glad I blogged about some of it.