2 years - fireplace

As promised here is a post about how our fireplace developed into what it is today. We had hoped that we could just open it like the one in the dining room, which is non-functioning because the previous owners cut off the chimney and it stops in the attic. Not a good idea to start a fire in that one. Our hope was to be able to create a functioning fireplace in the living room as the chimney is still intact. After tearing down the row of bricks we discovered lots of dirt and our boiler exhaust. Big bummer! I guess that's why they put up the row of bricks in the first place. At least we got rid of the ugly and not symmetrical stone on the floor. What was up with that? We'll never know...

We had a friend who is a contractor close the opening, build us a mantel and lay down marble mosaic on top of the original marble hearth because unfortunately it was too small for the new mantel. I searched the internet for an old cast iron fireplace cover/door to recreate the look of a working fireplace and quickly discovered that they are quite expensive if they are in a good condition. So I started looking for something I could restore myself and found a nice looking one on ebay with a starting bid of $30 and it was located in NJ, so we could pick it up ourselves. Nobody else bid on it because on one of the corners a piece had broken off, it didn't bother me because I thought I could come up with an idea on how to fix it. First I stripped the paint off of the fireplace cover, which took me months to complete. The big pieces were easy but the intricate parts were pretty time consuming. I also had to take a break from stripping the thing because I spent way too much time in the basement working on it. When I finally finished stripping and sanding the piece I started to built up the missing corner (more details here) and finished it off with a couple of coats of black spray paint.