Fireplace Makeover

When Ryan and I moved into our new house in March, the house was in such great shape that we unpacked and left it at that. We didn't want to attempt any projects while we were still commuting into Boston every day. Well now that I am no longer doing that commute, the itch to paint has been slowly creeping in. I am now at a point where I feel like we are settled, and it's time to personalize the space to really make it our own. Because we just purchased and installed a new wood stove (to be discussed further on another post ;-)), I felt like the fireplace was the best thing to tackle first.

Here is our fireplace before:

It's a great space, and we were very fortunate to even have a fire place in our first house. The built-ins in this house is one of the things I love the most, because I think it adds a lot of character. However, there's so much going on around the fireplace that I feel as if it gets a little lost in the shuffle. We also wanted to better highlight the gorgeous glass bowl above the mantel that my brother made for us. We debated about the color and where exactly to put it for a while, and finally came up with a lightened version of Behr's "toffee crunch". I thought for a long time about whether or not I should paint the built-ins around the fireplace, but in the end we decided it would be too much color. We stuck to the middle section, painting the white parts and keeping the yellow/beige. The insert around the opening to the fireplace had to go so that we could install the stove (thank goodness! The brass and black were just not doing it for me). After days of taping, painting and installations here is what we have now:

I would also like to mention that this entire makeover cost us $5! (not including the stove and installation of course!) I started with a color sample of the paint to see what it would look like and realized that there was a lot more paint in that little jar than I thought! I did two coats of the paint and only used two of the samples, and still have a little left over for future touch ups. If you're only painting a small area, the samples are the way to go! They're only $2.50 and you get a decent amount! :-)

I'm still undecided about what to do with the built-ins and thinking about maybe painting them in the future. Anyone have any great suggestions? I would love to hear them! In the meantime, on to the dining room!