The NEVER-ending project

For several months my house was torn apart, messy, and was a remodeling zone.  I starting by painting the kitchen area in January 2014 and then ventured into the living room.  Corbin and I had talked several times about how we wanted more color and less brown in our living room.  We wanted to redo the fireplace but had no idea what to do.  After painting the living room I decided that paint was not enough of a change for me and started to tear the old tile off of the fireplace.  I didn't have a plan for the fireplace but I just went for it!  It is fun to tear things apart!  The tile was stuck directly to the sheetrock so we were left with a huge hole.  

Our fireplace had a holes in the wall for about 3 weeks while we decided what we should do for the new tile.  When we did this project we probably spent more time talking and planning than we did actually doing the project itself ;-)  We have never laid tile before so we also had a lot of research to do.  I love YouTube!

After completing the tile it took over a month to finish the mantle.  We thought about painting our old mantle but decided we wanted something bigger and grander.  Again, there was a lot of planning and talking.  I would get so frustrated because there was so much talking and not enough doing.  It was good that we talked so much because it turned out awesome.  There was a learning curve using tools we have never used before.  Thank goodness for borrowing tools because we had them for a LONG time!

My house was in a constant state of disaster.  I was so ready for it to be done! 

 Finally at the end of June we completed the fireplace!  I even added an extra project by framing the windows!  I did that one by myself while Corbin was at work.  Pretty proud of myself!  I'm really proud of both of us actually.  With never doing a project like this before, it turned out amazing!  I think it looks like professionals did the job.  I might be a little delusional about how good it is because of how hard we worked ;-)

In October 2014 we got new furniture to complete the look and then March of 2015 is when the room was completely done with all the decor.  We also added board and batten to our front entryway, painted our stairway to upstairs, and painted the dining room.  Whew!

Before and After's

It really was the never-ending project!