There is no song that goes with "Fireplace"

Did y'all know that summer is NOT the time to put a house on the market? While I wait, and wait, I've started removing things. Things I really love, like the Chinamen and the ginger jar from the mantle, and the groups of prints that hung all the way around the living room. Wine-induced introspection has led me to conclude that I am either highly anxious (duh) and wanting less stimulation, or I am trying to depersonalize Misty Hollow so giving it to someone is not the soul-eviscerating experience I expect it to be.

 

So I painted the upstairs bathroom, which was a pain in the arse, but the results make it look taller and less devoid of personality. I have a backsplash plan for the kitchen that will commence once the materials come in. And the handy man is coming to work on a storage solution in the kitchen I'm hoping to God works.

 

For reasons that have always confounded me, the people who painted the house when they put on the market painted the detailed mantle the same color as the walls. We have never, in three years, built a fire in the fireplace, but it was still dusty and sooty in there. My boys asked to celebrate the fourth by staying home in their pajamas, so I used paint on hand to freshen up the fireplace, for the grand total of $0.

 

 

I am bothered by the painted brick, as I fully support exposed brick hearths, having grown up sitting on one while I made my back painfully hot in front of a fire. It is the same color as the walls, and I have not completely ruled out painting the brick, but have been encouraged by people who do not pull triggers as quickly as I do to live with it for a minute and see if it really needs it.

 

I pinned pictures of fireplaces with painted brick and white mantles. They eyesore is that there is a metal fireplace insert that is a giant black box, and I had trouble finding pictures of inserts like this.

 

The putty painted brick pops the white of this mantle, which is also deliciously styled:

 

Found on Houzz.

 Here they make the black box work with a filigree screen and topiaries, which would be overkill with a mantle that extends down the sides to the hearth:

From AJC Homefinder.

My ideal solution to the black box would be birch logs, but you have to BUY them, and spending $50 on logs I will not light in a fireplace I will not use in a house that I am trying to sell is a little frivolous, even for me:

From Lonny Magazine.

 An alternative painting the brick hearth putty would be painting it the same white as the mantle.

From here.

For now, I painted the fireplace (sometimes over the soot, shh) flat black. It was soot-covered, dust-filled and part gray. It also had a cracker still in it from that adventure of the falling squirrel.

 

The "before", and this is the accurate color in the entire room. Blech.

The mantle got a coat of Behr's Snowfall White in semi-gloss, because that's what I had. The basket came from Pier 1 ages ago, and is actually functional. It holds the nap pillow and the nap blanket when nobody (me) is napping.

 

 

An additional thing worth mentioning because I am proud of the solution are my drapes. When my mother and I made them, Ms. Home Ec did not tell me to wash the fabric before we made the curtains. So after a year (or two) when I took them down to wash them, they shrunk all to hell. At least ten inches off the ground, when they once pooled. The solution was NOT to get rid of them, because I love them, we made them, and the cost to replace would greatly exceed the cost to order additional fabric. Which is what I did, only in the contrasting print, which gave me a color block look that I'm digging more than the original ones.

 

Fabric is Premier Prints Slub fabric in Kelp.

I am not doing any more work on the house this weekend. I promise. We're headed tomorrow for a cousin's night out to see a band. "Moderation" is not a word we're necessarily familiar with, so there's that. Happy weekend, peeps!