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.

finished fireplace

The fireplace is finally finished! We're not sure yet what to hang above it and what we'll put on top of the mantel.

Quite a difference from what it looked like when we bought the house.

fireplace door

Back in September I bought a fireplace door/summer cover on ebay for only $30. Although it was white in the ebay pictures it arrived spray painted gold. P picked it up and when he brought it home I immediately told him that he got the wrong fireplace cover. Upon further inspection, comparing the pictures from the auction to the real thing and the obvious paint smell we came to the conclusion that someone painted it before we picked it up. Just one more layer of paint that needed to be stripped off. Luckily a layer of spray paint is nothing compared to what felt like 100 layers of paint underneath. I worked on stripping the cover for months. Ok it was only a handful of weekends with a big break in between because I got so sick of standing in the basement and scraping gunk of that thing. Everything was treated various times with stripper and I always let it work its magic overnight. The bigger pieces were fairly easy to work with. The small detailed piece took some time because I had to scrape out every nook and cranny.

This is how the cover looked when I finally stripped off all the paint. After that I used heavy duty scour pads to take off all the excess paint and stripper that was still on it. I tried to sand it as well but didn't like that the sanding paper took away the nice texture of the cast iron.

On the pictures from the ebay auction you could already see that one corner of the frame was chipped off but I thought I could repair it and once it would be spray painted it would not be visible anymore. I bought a self adhesive body patch at my local Autozone. The adhesive would not stick to the back of the frame so I had to glue it on with liquid nails and used three clamps to keep it in place until it dried.

A friend gave me a package of Bondo Glass fiberglass filler to start rebuilding the shape of the frame.The texture was kind of hard to work with so I took another trip the Autozone and bought some lightweight body filler which I knew would get the job done. In 2001 I did a similar project with mesh, body filler and spray paint to repair the roof of my very first car, a golden 1989 Honda Civic which I drove around LA while I was doing an internship in Santa Monica Ah, the memories...

I used the lightweight body filler to build up the shape so that it will match the existing. It actually took a couple of steps to get it right. Apply body filler, let it dry, sand and then repeat until you're happy with the result. After that I primed the fireplace door/cover and spray painted it black.

The whole project cost less than $50. Yay!

- fireplace door $30
-adhesive body patch $6*
-lightweight body filler $7*
-Krylon Indoor/Outdoor primer in black $1.25**
-Krylon Indoor/Outdoor spray paint in black satin finish $1.75**

*no sales tax added
**got the paint with a 75% discount because the store I bought the paint from closed down

The cover has not been mounted yet. Hopefully I will accomplish it the coming weekend. Stay tuned for pictures of the finished fireplace...

fireplace mantel update

We had a friend who is also a contractor built a fireplace mantel for us and put the marble mosaic down. I used the long Thanksgiving weekend to paint it and all the other moulding in the living room. I like the crisp white against the brick. Now I have to finish working on the cast iron fireplace door, will post an update on the progress on that soon...It is starting to come together and we started with this mess which doesn't look as bad in pictures as it was in real life.

small progress

Phew...I feel like we didn't finish any of the projects we started so far. There is progress but everything gets finished in baby steps even though we work on the house each weekend. It's probably just my impatient self and working on a hundred things at once.

One of the projects we started is working on our living room fireplace which was bricked up and also had a raised stone hearth. We already thought it would look nice to open it up when we looked at the house for the second time. The first time it was covered under bags, furniture and all kinds of other stuff so we didn't really see what it looked like and assumed it is open like the one in the dining room. The brick and the stone was removed and surprise! we found some kind of vent (?) for our heating system in it. That was probably the reason why it was bricked up in the first place. Bummer! We also discovered the original marble plate underneath the raised stone but unfortunately it was not in the best condition and it is too small as well. It even showed the floorplan of the old mantel. Immediately we thought about what we could do to make it look nice and somewhat original to the house...I found a cast iron fireplace door/summer cover on ebay for 30$. And the best part of it was that the seller was local and we were able to pick it up. We also picked out this black and white marble mosaic to go on top of the old marble piece. The fireplace will hopefully finished over Thanksgiving weekend.

On the pictures you can also see that we got rid of the door opening on the left side of the fireplace. The opening didn't make sense to us and led to a small hallway from which you enter the guest bathroom and bedroom. You can still access the small hallway from the main hallway which is sufficient for us.