Fireplace Before and after!

how it looked on inspection day...leaving a lot to be desired. Fake brick tiles and all.

There is nothing like a warm fire on a 90 degree day! ...but we are so proud that we had to show it in it's full glory

dead sexy slab

The parking strip is all finished but we still need to add sand and gravel in the joints to the front walkway. The process that we used was:

1. Dig out ~3-4" dirt for path
2. Tamp down dirt
   
3. add ~2" deep 1/4" minus gravel (this is partially because we already have solid soil that drains well)
4. tamp down
   
5. lay quartzite
6. lift stone and add ~1/2" sand
7. put stone so level in sand
8. fill joints with gravel
9. wet down gravel
   
10. admire
    

We decided to tackle a walkway not only because it is not exactly attractive to have a purely soil style walkway and yard, but you would not believe the amount of dirt that was in our house by the end of the week.

In addition, Barrett, our awesome tile guy spent a large part of his weekend over at our house installing our beautiful fireplace tile...more pictures to come soon as it should be all finished this week sometime. You can still see some of the dust created on the andirons from when Barrett jack hammered out the old hearth-it took me two rounds of dusting to get everything up. Now I just need to find some decor for the mantle.

Built-in Updates

It has been quite awhile since I have updated on our built-ins. They were finished being built in early Spring (our contractor was fabulous). He did most assembly off-site and did the final details and installs in our home (not surprised by how many little adjustments that we can't even tell are there were needed being that our almost 100 year old walls are not level). We were left to hours of staining and still need to install glass door panels as well as re-install that electrical outlets. We are debating on stained glass and regular glass but are unsure based on the price of stained glass-may just do regular glass for now and add stained as the budget and design creativity allow in the future. Fireplace tile has finally been delivered and is set for install next week.

Living Room Before Move In

gorgeous door needed a re-stain and new hardware, note the unneeded peep hole, paneling and metal screen door

more paneling, wallpaper (10 layers of wallpaper and paint underneath the paneling), pink curtains, aluminum windows, popcorn ceiling...however we saw past it all and loved the floors (still need to be refinished as well as the great door molding)

faux brick fireplace but original tile

so sad, the original built-ins were torn out at some point

great original windows sans trim frame the what we found out was a crumbling fireplace and chimney

More fireplace built-in inspiration

Here are some other pictures of nice bungalow fireplace area built-ins

Fireplace Tile

I thought I would share a few great websites we have found for tile in the search for our own. We plan to go with handcraft tile, because of their great designs, quality craftsman style and price point, however are still picking our colors. We are going to order the mother oak tile, some small detail acorn tiles as well as field tiles. I would never have imagined that choosing a color is so difficult, but we are about to go for round 2 on ordering color samples...we are planning a green or brown. Anyone used this tile or feel like they could give me some great input? We will have darkly stained fir around the fireplace.
Here are the companies we have found and the links to their sites:

• Handcraft Tile
  
• Tile Restoration Center
• Laird Plumleigh
• Rick Rivadeneyra
• Skiersch Studio Tiles
• Dard Hunter
• Lewellen Studio
• North Prairie Tileworks
• Door Pottery
  

Dreaming custom built-ins

Here are some inspiration ideas we have found through my research. Our dream built-ins include corbels, stained fir, cabinets with stained glass door, window seat with storage, columns, and a secretary desk