The View From Here

Many things have happened since I last posted an update.  Many things indeed!  We are not quite finished with our living area yet but we are many steps closer.  I will give you a visual walk through of the progress that has been made.  The last you saw we had the tile stuck up on the wall with tape.  The next step was to grout the tile.

Next we started building and fitting the mantle to the wall.

Next came the staining and finishing process.  This is what took up most of last week as we had to wait for things to dry to put on second coats.

Finally, after many weeks of waiting the people doing the fireplace insert came out and did their thing.  We also installed the finished mantle.  This picture shows the fireplace completed!  We still have some work to do to the wall above the fireplace but we are very pleased with how this part turned out.

At this point I need to thank my dad for making this project possible.  Without his help this would not have happened. So, thanks dad!  I really appreciate you.

Pretty, isn’t it?  With this completed and since we weren’t going to do anything to the living room floors for a while we decided that we would go ahead and finish putting together our entertainment system that we bought back in July.

There are still many more things we want to do to our house but for now we will sit back and be content with what we have done…..for a while.

Brian

Just another quick fireplace update.  There will probably be several of these in the next week.  We put up the tile on the front of the fireplace this evening.  And yes, that is duct tape.  The two pieces in the top middle needed some support.  Nice, huh?  Anyway, the next step is grouting the tile and then we will be on to the mantle.  I am hoping to have the mantle done this week end.  That’s it for now.  Pretty isn’t it?  Let me know what you think.

Oh, and just for grins, here is a little doodle I did that will give you an idea of what it will look like when completed.  Yes, I used Crayons.

Brian

There have been too few of these updates on what is going on with our renovation projects.  That is a direct result of the speed at which these projects are going.  Very slow.  But there is progress nonetheless and we should be seeing the progress speed up.

As you can see from the picture above most of the white paint that covered our fireplace has been scrapped off and some tile has been laid around the base of it.  We will be putting tile up on the face of the fire place very soon and then comes the mantle and posts followed closely with the fire place insert.  At the earliest this project will be finished up around October 7th.  We have had quiet a few delays but things are going relatively smoothly again.  Yay!  I will have more updates soon.

Brian

It has been a while since my last post about the things we are attempting to do to our house. Last time I talked about this we had ripped off the entertainment center that covered our fireplace and were planning on redoing it somehow. It is amazing how you can start with a simple plan and, over time, it gets more and more complicated.  Here are some of the things that fixing the fireplace has expanded to.

• Fireplace Insert.  Originally we were going to re-brick the fireplace but it seems more economical to put in a fireplace insert.  This will avoid the cost of re-bricking and it will provide an alternate way to heat our house in the winter.
• Floors.  Ripping out the entertainment center has left a place on the floor with no carpet.  I don’t think we could find a piece to patch it so we are thinking of replacing the floors throughout the living room, dining room, and kitchen so that it all matches (and is put down correctly).  At first we were thinking of putting down a good laminate wood but now we are considering refinishing the wood floors that are under the current floor if they are in good condition.
• Rugs.  This goes along with the floors.  If we have hard floors throughout we want some rugs to break it up.
• Entertainment Center.  We tore down the old one so we needed a new one.  It is still mostly put together.
• Blinds.  After moving the TV to another wall in the living room we are finding that the current blinds let in a little too much light and cause a glare on the TV.  Not to mention they are old and breaking.  We want to get some plantation style blinds to replace them.
• ?????.  Throw in any other type of random remodel and you could add it to this list.

So apparently fixing a fireplace has a domino effect to it.  As I mentioned before it has been a while since I updated you on this project and guess what, nothing is totally done yet!  Everything is hinging on what the fireplace people tell us and we have had some trouble getting them to come out.  Well they finally did so we should know something soon.  When that soon comes I will let you know what happens.  Maybe when something changes I will get some more pictures up.

So to summarize, we are in the same place we were before just with more projects and a little more information.

Brian

Our house has a fireplace.  It has actually always had a fireplace but it has been covered up by an entertainment center that the people who lived there before us built.  We have now ripped said entertainment center off to reveal a fireplace that needs some work.  We were aware before getting into the project.  Here is the sad part.  We tore the entertainment center down on Monday, hoping to get the people from the Fire Escape out there to give us an estimate sometime this week.  Well, they won’t be able to come out until August 18th.  This means that we won’t be able to put the floor down until then also as we don’t know what all redoing the fireplace will entail.  I suppose I can be patient until then.

The fireplace isn’t the only thing being redone.  In the process we will be replacing some of the floors and putting up a new entertainment center (that was bought from IKEA!).  Since the entertainment center is moving I had to relocate some wires (cable and speaker) which meant that I spent Monday evening in the attic.  Yes, this was the day that it got up to 107 degrees outside.  I don’t want to guess what it was in that attic.

So all we have to do is wait until the 18th of August.  Hopefully after the estimate they will be able to get right to it.  I will try to keep pictures posted so that you can view the progress.  I am excited to get this done!

Oh, and here is a picture of our new entertainment center 70% put together.

Brian