Thursday, December 15, 2011

The Back Room - Rocking Out The Fireplace

The fireplace, oh how I love the fire place. I don't think I ever shared any of my fireplace inspiration pictures, so here's one of the main ones.


I love this fireplace for many reasons, the main two being the stacked stone and the dark wood mantel.

First step was getting one of our friends Bill the Furnace guy to come by and spenf a Saturday with Derek hooking up the gas to the fireplace. Once that was done we secured the box into place in the frame and set out in search of some sort of stone tile for the face of the fireplace.

We visited The Tile Shoppe in Mississauga and found a really great deal on some stacked slate ledgestone.


So we laid down a piece of melamine to protect the floor, screwed in cement board and got to work!


While I'm normally the tile person in the family Derek tackled most of this project himself, and I must say, he did a fantastic job.

The space there at the top was left empty to accommodate the mantel Derek planned on building. Once the tiles were set Derek framed out the top portion of the wall, setting it back the somewhat random distance I deemed to be appropriate.


From there it was a matter of drywall, trim and painting. Then one night while I was out with some friends, Derek worked his magic and used some lumber we had around the house to create a mantel that looks like it's one giant piece of wood.

We picked out a stain that's fairly close to the colour of the floor and got the first coat on.


And then we waited.

And waited.

And waited some more.

And then we finally added the second coat of stain.


Since then Derek has added two coats of clear coat and it's looking really really nice.  Here you can see it decked out with an assortment of Santa's and other Christmas gear.  It's hard to see the gloss coat, but trust me, it's there!


This room is where we spend the majority of our time in the evenings hanging out, so having the fireplace is really wonderful.  We can keep the bulk of the house set to a fairly low temperature and then just flip on the fireplace if we get chilly.  Maybe in the future we'll install a fan to help push some of that heat around, but for now, it's nice to enjoy our cozy little family room.

And yes, I realize I need to clean the glass.  Hush now.

3 comments:

  1. did you have any issue running wood floor directly up to gas fire place?

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    Replies
    1. None at all! We're 4 years out now and the floor is doing very well. We made sure to following the specs as to how far the fireplace had to be located above the floor, so I'm sure that helps.

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  2. How much wall space did you need in that corner? We are thinking of buying a house with a similarly situated wood stove, and I am wondering if there is enough wall space between the corner and window to fit something like this.

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