Fireplace Built-ins

Yeap... I am a procrastinator.  If something will take 5 minutes to do, I will wait until the 4th minute to start doing it.  I've had this on House Project list since beginning of last year.

But let me take you back... back to 2005, because it just makes the after so much sweeter.

(Sorry, we didn't digital camera back then.)

This is what our Family room looked like when we did our final walk through with home inspector.  Mustard yellow walls.  Dark brown beams across the ceiling. Popcorn ceiling.  Panelling on either side of the fireplace.

But I could see the potential.  It was hidden in there.  Very deeply in there.

So over the past 7 years, we painted the walls a warm sage green, removed the dark panelling and so on.

But for now I just want to focus on the dark t.v. corner.  No matter what we did, we just couldn't find the right piece of furniture for either side of the fireplace (without spending a fortune that is). :)

So, after years and years of complaining, I decided to build something.

It was well over a year ago that I started this little project. I consider all of my projects to be little because none of them are earth shattering.

Do you see the missing middle shelf?  I couldn't figure out how to install it.  The second from the top actually sits on the vertical pieces.  Yeah, I don't know why I did it like that.  (if you are looking for a how-to, you're not gonna get it here).  So anyways,  I lived with it... and worked on another little project (which also took me forever).


Then I had my ah-ha moment, and it came to me in my sleep.  Well, not really. I finally got tired of answering the question "are you doing anything with the middle?" So off to Home Depot I went and explained my dilemma to the nice wood man and he helped me out.  He cut down a 1 x1 piece of wood into three inch lengths and told me to nail it in and then sit the shelf on top, and then put trim on top to hide it. Ta-da! Why didn't I think of that??

So here is one side of the built-in cabinet. (the same one as the above)

And here is the other side where the t.v. sits on top.  It's nice a sturdy and now we plenty of places to put books,  knick knacks, etc.  (100 points if you can find Elvis in the above picture.)

And do you remember the mirror-palooza from a few weeks ago?

The old one is now on top of the fireplace.  In this pic, you can see the popcorn ceiling is now gone, the dark beams are gone, and the panelling is gone. ( I still need to do something about the mantel. 2015 maybe?!?)

Do you want to know how to remove popcorn ceiling? I took my Shaklee Basic H2  and made the regular all purpose cleaner formula and sprayed my ceiling and then scraped the popcorn ceiling off. Easy-peasy-lemon-squeeze!

 I then painted the whole thing in Ceiling White paint (yes that is the name of the colour).

And now because I love before and afters,  here it is (one side anyways).

Much better isn't it? It's made a huge difference in how we keep the room organized.

So, tell me you are a procrastinator like me? For silly reasons like... I don't know how to do it, so i'll just keep ignoring it and maybe it will go away.

Please check out my online Shaklee site.

ALWAYS SAFE. ALWAYS WORKS. ALWAYS GREEN

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