Working with what you got!!

So when thinking about my house remodel, the first thing that came to my mind was "Working with what we got!" That has been our motto all through this renovation. Okay, maybe not for the kitchen but everything else! So with this blog entry I wanted to focus on the fireplace. In our house, the old owners had this huge entertainment center in front of the window. This is not necessarily bad, but to have the tv in front of the window, means you have to have the couch either next to the tv or blocking the entry to the playroom. In my opinion, both of these scenarios would look weird. So we knew we had to do something different. How about hang the tv from the fireplace? I have seen it done, just had never considered doing it myself. So I researched the heck out of it, like I research everything:) I figured out that actually you could have a tv on a fireplace as long as you know it won't get hot. So we built a fire and tested it. The bricks on the fireplace never got hot! So we were in the clear. Now we needed to decide on the look for the fireplace. Working with what we had, we decided to paint the cabinets flanking the fireplace white. We painted the fireplace bricks two shades darker than the wall color. In a world where money was no object, I would have loved to tile over the bricks, but then I couldn't blog about "working with what you got;)" Now we needed a mantel. The fireplace was a wall of bricks with cabinets flanking each side. So I researched rustic mantels. Do you know how much people want for those mantels?? $300 starting price. That's not even shipping included! Well we were working with what we got. We had little money to spend. So I went to Lowe's and bought a 4 x 4 post. I had Lowe's cut it to size. Then I took a bag of screws and a hammer and beat the wood. This distressed it making it look old. I stained it walnut to match my furniture and put 2 coats of polyurethane on it. Guess how much it cost?? $25!

Now that we had the mantel, we had to anchor it. This was challenging but not impossible. First thing we did was created cardboard examples of the mantel and tv. We wanted to figure out just were to place each. No one wants to get a neck ache from watching a tv that is placed too high on the wall! Then my husband made a channel in the back of the mantel so we could hide the tv wires. We put a hole in the cabinets adjacent to the fireplace so we could feed the cords to our cable box that was sitting in the cabinet. With my dad's help, we anchored 4 talcum screws on each side of the mantel from the inside of the cabinet. Talcum screws are massive screws that are used to hold up patio covers or main structures. This mantel will never come down!!!  Then, we drilled holes into the brick using a special drill bit and mounted the tv mount to the wall. Then hung the tv to the mount. Easy as pie, right;) Actually, it was not so bad. Anyone can do it, you just need to take your time, expect challenges and power through those challenges!

Here are some before and after pictures of the fireplace!

 You can see the previous owner painted the sides of the cabinets white but left the rest in oak. Lovely:)

The entertainment center was blocking that window and the couch would have blocked the opening of the playroom. The tv had to go up on the fireplace.

We used cardboard to determine where we wanted the mantel and tv to go. Don't want the tv too high!

Working with what you got! Some paint and the same hardware on the cabinets. Huge difference!

This is a picture of it today. You can see the tv cables are hiding in the channel behind the mantel. The mantel is not attached to the brick! It is attached to the cabinets on the sides. So if you open up a cabinet door you would see the heads of 4 talcum screws on each side. Pretty awesome:) All in all this cost about $50 for paint, screws and the beam.

Next time you think you need all new things in your house, pause and think, "how can I work with what I got??"

On another note, my fireplace screen was $3.50 at a thrift store, fireplace wood holder was $3 and fire pokers were $5 both at yard sales:)