Remodeling the Family Room

On March 28th Michael and I began demolishing our family room fireplace.  For many years I've been wanting to do this and finally Mike has agreed.  Now that it's finally starting to take shape, he's loving it.  Here's some pictures and videos of our progress so far.

This is the way it looked before.  The brick wall and hearth that extended into the room 22 inches and took up so much space.  I hated that part.  I love brick but not like this.  See the little gray fence looking thing to the left of the fireplace?  That was something Mike made just to cover the wood storage box.  It was one of those big boxes used to store wood for the burning in the fireplace.

First brick attack.

Tap tap tap.

Lookie what we discovered in the brick wall.

The old can opener type.

We covered the fireplace insert to not damage it.

Brick removed.  Part 1.  After we removed the brick we hired someone to come take out the insert so we can rebuild the brick around only the fireplace and create a much smaller hearth.

We gave our friend, Roger Bean, the floor for the house he's building on the coast in Irish Beach.  He's going to sand it down and use it in his art studio.  We bought three paintings from him.

After we were done taking out the flooring, poor Mike was sitting in this chair all pooped out.  He said to me, "Lisa, you finally wore my fat ass out."  I just had to capture this after he said that to me.

Our beautiful new paintings.

Jason is our bricklayer.  Rebuilding the fireplace brick surround.

The pictures here are Mike getting down his mantle design before the brick was whitewashed.

Then I did a nice whitewash on the brick.  I had to play with the white color and ended up using our buttermilk paint color which has slight yellow undertones.  I love it!

I chose a pretty yellow for the room.  I love yellow rooms, they're so cheerful.

Showing the fireplace rebuilt and whitewashed above.  We put in some new insulation and had an electrician come out to do some wiring for us.

First coat.

We're pretty pleased with how it's turning out.  Next up is going to be the new flooring.  We chose 48 x 6 inch tiles that resemble a wood floor.  Mike is also building a new t.v. stand in the corner.  I'll show some pictures of that soon.

This is going a little slower than we want only because we have to work on orders and try to get things shipped on time for our customers, so we work on this project when we can.  Even still, it's going fairly fast.  We are now awaiting on the tile to be delivered to the store in Sacramento so we can go pick it up.  Then we can begin the floor.

I'm going to paint the brass on the fireplace insert, too.  I've never liked the brass.  For those who love it, I apologize.  It's not my thing.  First I have to etch the brass by sanding it lightly and then I'm going to spray the whole thing with a heat proof black paint.  Once that is completed, we can call the guy up to come put the insert back into place.  We have a little cold draft coming into the house from the insert being gone.