Fireplace Surround BEFORE and AFTER

As I mentioned earlier this week, I am so glad to have our fireplace surround remodeled!  It looks soooo much better.  

Here is the before....

(an old photo from back when the room was green.)

1970's bathroom tile on the fireplace in our living room.  Our 1850's living room.  Not quite in keeping with the period of the house.   How do you like the way the middle tiles were cut to fit in the center of the fireplace?  And the tiles to the left have been unattached since we moved in twelve years ago.

Here is how two of our other fireplace surrounds look....

(guest bedroom)

(dining room from Christmas 2010)

A black sort of concrete, plaster type stuff has been brushed on them.  

Lots of fireplaces from the mid-1800's in our town's historic district look like these.  I think these fireplaces were originally for logs, then converted to coal burning fireplaces.  THEN they were bricked-up to keep the birds out - I am guessing.   (The one in the living room that we remodeled is for a regular wood burning fire place.)  

My husband bought some mortar at Lowe's.  Sometimes I just wish there weren't so many options.  If there had been ONE bag of mortar/tile adhesive - we could have been in and out of Lowe's in 5 minutes.  But there were LOTS of choices.  We knew we wanted gray, not white.  We knew we needed something to cling to the vertical tiles we were leaving in place.  After consulting every Lowe's employee about what THEY thought would work best, we chose this mortar......

My sweet husband had already spent two evenings, after work, trying to remove the old tiles.  

He decided to "call it quits" with tile removal once the bottom tiles were removed.  The vertical tiles are officially there for LIFE.  He just "mortared" over them.  

Have I mentioned more than 40 times that I need a real camera?

Then we crossed our fingers and hoped the mortar would not slide off into an ugly-rock-solid heap by morning.  Thankfully, it looks GREAT!

We are quite pleased.  (That metal piece of art is actually a "summer door" or "summer cover" - the outer surround that it should fit into to cover the coal burning area is missing.  Summer Covers were used over coal burning fireplaces during the summer to keep the wind from blowing through the chimney and blowing coal and soot into the house during the summer.  I am guessing that was before flue's, but that is just a guess.)

I am back into my art. 
Finally. 
After quite the break (again). 

 I have a small "show" of sorts coming up, so I am busy painting Christmas....

This is Day 21 of 30 Days of (ahem.....non-consecutive) Painting.


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