The AFTER Party and A Fireplace Before/After

It's been a little hectic around our house lately 

{stomach flu, colds, bad weather, three cranky two-year-olds and one grouchy mom}, 

so I haven't really gotten to any of my projects...

So I thought I'd share a Before & After project we did in our first house.

 {Total lack of personal decor in this picture because I had staged our house to put on the market}

Aside from our kitchen remodel, the fireplace the best looking makeover we did.

Wait until you see the BEFORE....

{This picture was taken while the house was still occupied by the previous owners. 

Those were NOT my decorations!}

We ripped down the heinous ceiling fan as soon as we moved in and replaced it with a recessed light.

The rest of the project was a little more cumbersome.

First of all, the ugly wood stove was our only source of heat. 

So we lived with the ugliness until we had saved up enough to have an HVAC system installed.

We were not sad to see the wood stove go...

what a pain to have to build fires every single day!

Then it was on to the demo of the faux rock, 

which we quickly found {oh crap!} had been cemented to the drywall.

After tearing down all of the rock and cutting out the unfortunate mess of drywall, 

we put up new heat resistant tile backer board.

Then attached large multi-colored slate tiles {from Home Depot}.

To keep the heavy tiles from falling off while the adhesive dried, 

we propped them up with some scrap boards, cut to size.

I actually thought putting the tile up was a fun project...

kinda like an over-sized art piece.

Then Jacob built a custom mantle that turned out A-MAZING!

After he finished it up with trim molding, 

I slathered on the high-gloss white paint and we had ourselves a real beauty!

It helped that we added a gas fireplace insert too, 

so we didn't have to deal with an ugly wood burning unit anymore :)

Here's one more look at the transformation...

Much improved, don't ya think?

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

And now for those of you that came to party...

Please link up a BEFORE & AFTER project {past or present}.

Please link to the specific post and not to the main page of your blog.

 Please put a link in your post that leads people to the party.

There's a cute button below that you can use or you can do a text link if you'd rather.

<center><a href="http://www.3meadowlakecottage.com/2011/04/after-party-and-fireplace-beforeafter.html"><img border="0" src="http://i869.photobucket.com/albums/ab258/ezacharda/afterpartybuttonjpeg.jpg"/></a></center>

It would be great if you became a follower of 3 Meadow Lake Cottage, too, 

but it's not required :)