Finishing Our Antique Mantle

We finally pulled the trigger on a finishing treatment for our 100+ year old fireplace surround in our dining room!

If you have been following along (here and here) you know we were torn on how to treat the finish of this jewel. As much as we loved the existing dark stained look, the overall finish was in rough shape and we knew it would have to be addressed.

To make matters more complicated the piece is pretty fragile.  There are a lot of delicate details throughout, which is what makes it so beautiful,but it also makes it susceptible to chipping so we knew a huge amount of sanding or messing with the piece in general would not be ideal. So, we decided painting was the way to go.

We taped off around the mantle, and more importantly around the new marble surround.

Then we pushed the dining room table back and created a Dexter-esque room with floor to ceiling plastic to ensure no paint or paint dust would make it's way to the rest of the room/house. 

With everything prepped we were ready to paint. We decided on Stone Hearth by Benjamin Moore, a nice creamy taupe in a gloss finish. We felt like the taupe would bring the elegance while the glossy finish would accentuate all of the beautiful detailing throughout this piece. We loaded up our trusty paint gun and got to work. 

Brent sprayed the entire piece with one thick coat of paint and we let it dry for a few days. Once dry we were extremely happy with the color but noticed we had a lot of caulking to do. The lighter color definitely covered up some of the missing wood chunks, but it also brought out all of the cracks and imperfections. 

We filled in all of the holes.....

... and then sprayed on another coat. 

 Next, we got out the sand paper and sanded down any imperfections/runs in the paint and then applied our final coat of paint. 

Once that paint was dry I could not pull that plastic covering down fast enough.

Eeek!

What do you guys think? Did we do the mantle justice? We are loving it and can't wait to build the whole room around this statement piece. 

The next step? We plan to add walnut trim around the fireplace to fill all of the open holes from the previous mantle. If you follow me on Instagram you know that Brent and I popped into an awesome wood shop the other day and came home with some great wood. Here is a little sneak peek of what's to come......

All photos are my own. 

Everybody's Workin' For The Weekday

I swear this will be my last "my house" post for a few weeks. As many of you know, in addition to remodeling our first house, Brent and I are getting married in May. This weekend was our last full weekend without any parties, showers, trips or other wedding related activities so we were determined to take advantage of it.

We wanted to chip away at several big items on our "to do list", which happened to be DIY (Do It Yourself) face-lift-esque type projects.

The first item on the list was adding a little umph to the dining room. Below is a shot of one of the the dining room walls as it was Saturday morning. We liked the original chair-rail but wanted to jazz it up a bit.

          

After tossing a few ideas around we decided we wanted to add moulding under the chair-rail to create picture frames.  

We measured the walls and decided we would add seven picture frames around the room. So, we got out the tape measure and made marks where each of the frames would start and stop. 

Next, we headed to Home Depot to pick up our moulding. 

And.....TA - DA!!

How spiffy does this space look now? With a little paint and a few more finishing touches this room will be move-in ready! 

With a big check-mark on the dining room (for now) we headed back into the living room to focus on the fireplace and it's stone surround. Below is a "before" picture of the fireplace. It's kind of hard to see from this shot but the tile surround was a shade of peach. Ugh - it had to go. 

I like peach in clothing, in shoes and even in some textiles, but in tile... no, not for me. 

Like every decision, we tossed around several options, but we kept coming back to the fact that the tile met up with the hardwood flooring. Thus, options involving covering the tile with another surface, wouldn't work because it would create an uneven transition, and we didn't want to go through the process of busting up the tile. So we decided to paint the tile White, White Dove (OC-17) that is to match the fireplace and the trim in the room. 

While I'm typically not patient enough for primer, we decided it would be a good idea in this particular painting escapade because it will block stains and odors that may come from using the gas fireplace.

One coat of primer, one coat of White Dove and WHAM! BAM Thank you Brent....

OK, I'm exhausted. In the words of my Dad, I've got to get back to work so I can get some rest! Up next, the #StoneMountain Kitchen reveal, stay tuned you guys are going to flip. 

All photos are my own.