Mantle, part 1

We've been busy little bees this winter break - painting the kitchen/living room twice (the first color was too blue, so the second time we just went for good ol' trusty white) and wall-mounting the tv.
It's not quite done yet, but it's close.


The road to painting, as usual, but even more so for this space, was long and arduous. First, I had to patch this long hole in the wall where there used to be the wall.

There was nothing to screw any drywall to - which would've really sped up the process - so I stapled pieces of fiberboard mesh cut to size in the hole, smeared drywall mud in the hole, then tacked up another piece of mesh, smeared drywall mud, then smeared some more drywall mud, then some more, then some more....ad nauseum. Forgot to take pictures again, but the picture below - which is from the foyer where there were also huge plaster holes to which I had to apply the same process - kind of shows what I had to do.

Having so much fun

 Carpenter Dan drywalled the fireplace wall in preparation for the mantle he custom built. I wanted to mount the tv above the fireplace so that it can be viewed from the kitchen (also because there's really no other place in the room for it). I was wracking my brain for days trying to figure out a place to put the electronics (cable box, dvd player) and blasted wires. Ideally, Carpenter Dan could build a cabinet of sorts above the mantle, but then the tv would be higher than I wanted, plus the fireplace vent gets really hot.  I asked Dan if it would be possible for him to squeeze in a cabinet off to the side (and rotate the cable box and dvd player onto their sides??) until he suggested the super obvious solution to built one up high. DUH!

I tiled the fireplace surround with 6x6 carrara marble tiles. Since it's in a dry environment and therefore no risk of mold getting between the tiles, I could butt the tiles right up against each other without any grout lines!

See the thin sliver of marble on the corner there?

I didn't even have to make any cuts - yay, no tile saw - because I simply used the 6x6 tiles, and only needed two extra pieces on either side, which the tile shop had no problem doing for me.

Then Dan built the mantle and the cabinet. We painted.

the first color. It's actually really pretty, but through the living/dining doorway, I noticed the two rooms look awfully similar. 

Then we mounted the tv, snaking the wires through the wall and into the cabinet.

We need to stain and seal the mantle, patch in the rest of the wainscoting, and paint the wainscoting. But yeah, it feels baller.