We’re checking another one off of our renovation bucket list with this one! Today’s post is all about our new fireplace and built-ins project for the living room!
First of all, I just suddenly felt the need to google “living room vs. livingroom” and discovered that there is no grey area and that “living room” is unequivocally spelled as two words. It’s possible that I may have been spelling it incorrectly for the last 8.5 years or so, so sorry about that if you’re bothered by that sort of thing. Ha! 🙂 Anyway, I’ve had this vision for a fireplace and built-ins on the living room wall that you see right in front of you when you first walk into the room from the kitchen since we first moved in to our house, and now the time finally seems right to make that happen!
To say that I’m excited would be an understatement. We’re going to have shelves! Real ones! That can hold books! They’ll be in the right room and everything!
We’re also going to add a bit of closed storage underneath the shelves, which is never a bad idea!
Starting on the Fireplace and Built-Ins Project in the Living Room
We’re really juuuuuust getting started with this one, but I thought I’d give you a little preview of our plans and what we’ve done so far!
So here’s what we have in mind:
We’ll start out by installing an electric fireplace insert, then building a fireplace surround to, uh, surround it. 🙂 We’re also hoping to find a slab of stone we like (marble? granite that looks like marble?) so we can set it into the floor right in front of the fireplace, creating a nice, stream-lined hearth area. We’ll then install cabinets and shelving on either side of the fireplace surround, along with a bit of lighting, trim it all out, and call it done! Oh, there will also be a new TV in there somewhere.
Here’s a little mock-up that Chris made so you can get an idea of how it’s going to look.
What We’ve Done So Far
It doesn’t look like we have a whole lot done yet, but we’re on our way! We removed the old built-in shelf that was created when the master bedroom addition was done about 35-ish years ago. It was actually built into an old window, and it was really neat, but it was just placed awkwardly in the room. Here’s how it looked before we started actually ripping anything apart.
We took down the paneling and found some neat old wallpaper. My plan is to save a little bit of that and put it into a frame because it’s just so pretty.
Here’s all the panelling in the dumpster at our local dump. 🙂
Chris has been doing a great job of documenting this project so far on Instagram, so make sure to follow him over there for up-to-the-minute progress updates.
We’ve also found an electric fireplace insert that we like and purchased that, which is why you see it sitting in the room already. Fun fact: We brought it home and plugged it in to make sure it works and we just enjoyed having it on so much that we’ve turned it on everyday since then!
We did purchase some cabinets and doors that we found on sale, but we’re still not 100% sure if those will be the ones we use in the end. It’s good to have options!
So that’s the newest project so far! It’s a great, cozy, indoor project for this time of year that will end up making our home even cozier! 🙂
Have you tackled a project like this in your home? Any tips for us that we need to know before we really get into it?
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- Adding a Front Porch to Our Old Farmhouse
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Courtenay Hartford is the author of creeklinehouse.com, a blog based on her adventures renovating a 120-year-old farmhouse in rural Ontario, Canada. On her blog, Courtenay shares interior design tips based on her own farmhouse and her work as founder and stylist of the interior photography firm Art & Spaces. She also writes about her farmhouse garden, plant-based recipes, family travel, and homekeeping best practices. Courtenay is the author of the book The Cleaning Ninja and has been featured in numerous magazines including Country Sampler Farmhouse Style, Better Homes and Gardens, Parents Magazine, Real Simple, and Our Homes.