29 June 2011

Mantle Makeover!

Thanks for being patient with me while I threw a hissy fit yesterday.  Today, per the recommendation of a friend (who likely doesn't want to look at my leper face while we celebrate the birthday of this great nation), I went to the doctor, who loaded me up with more steroids.

I f'ing love steroids.  (It was so easy to ellipt tonight*.  After I finish this post I'm probably going to go pick up a car or pull an airplane with my teeth or something.)

Oh, and I'd also love to show you one of my other favorite parts of our new living room.  Have you ever noticed our mantle?  The smoker's-off-white/gray brick/white brick/red tile mantle?  No?  Here it was.

Note:  I totally took a bunch of actual good before pictures and neglected to load them onto the computer before I deleted the folder.  So you get a bunch of blast from the past shots.  Shooooot.

This one's almost unfair because it was from Christmas, 
and everything is cuter during the holiday season.


Please notice: awful curtains, even more heinous cornices, boring mail slot, and blah mantle.

And here it is now, after I removed the screen, scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed the inside, painted the inside and the red tile black, scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed the outside brick, and painted the mantle itself ultra white.  (Martha Stewart's Picket Fence, to be exact.)




Shoot yeah!

Oh, and, inspired by this photo from Pinterest (why aren't you playing on Pinterest with me?), I decided to get some sticks from the back yard from this bush I hacked to pieces a month or so ago and have yet to throw away, paint them crazy orange, and put them in a $3 vase from Target.


Fun, huh?


Inside our new fireplace is the trash can from my house in college, now full of Iris and Opal's toys and a Magna Doodle, a bit of an homage to my Friends.  I watched two full seasons of Friends while doing the living room last week.


The little mantle makeover cost less than $20, if you don't count the mirror (that was $30) that I got with a free giftcard during last month's HomeGoods adventure.  The biggest expense was the $15 quart of heatproof paint that I used to paint the inside of the fireplace and the hearth.

You may also notice that the curtains are different.  Cassie actually gave them to me a while back, and I hung them high and wide, just like Sherry and John say to do.  They've drastically changed the feel of the room, and I'm in love with them.  The curtains, not Sherry and John (even though they did help me out after that dream drive-by paintball shooting).


All in all, it's brighter and whiter and happier than it was before.  What do you think?


*Also, it may interest you to know that Dylan is having a really hard time deciding between Kelly and Brenda, and Cindy is afraid that Jim is going to have an affair with his secretary.  Donna is still gross.

3 comments:

  1. Whoa, the mantle in that pinterest photo looks exactly like your mantle. And the M statuette and silhouettes really made me think it was your mantle, too. Weeeeird.

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  2. ah crud, I was going to ask about the silhouettes.

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  3. Yeah, I think the Pinterest mantle is like the long-lost brother of our mantle. I don't know where they got the silhouettes, but I really like them. I know Sherry on Young House Love (kind of obsessed with them lately, what with all of the house projects) had a tutorial a while back on how to do a silhouette.

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