Fireplace Wall Makeover

If you've read my $5000 Kitchen Renovation blog, you'll know that we're accustomed to doing the odd renovation here and there. No sooner that I was finished the kitchen renovation, my wife suggested "we" get started on the fireplace wall. Before I explain the steps that were taken to do this renovation, here's a photo of the finished product:

We're quite pleased with the result which includes a tiled wall, decorative shelves (with LED lighting), extended wood mantle, custom media cabinet and wall mounted TV. When you compare to the "Before" picture, you'll probably agree that extending the mantle all the way across the wall helps make the room a lot bigger. Here's how it looked before:

The house was build in 2003 back in the days where rear projector TV's were the latest technology, therefore the fireplace was built to accommodate a maximum size 42" rear projector TV with the gas fire place to the right. Ideally, we would have liked to replace the gas fire with a longer, lower profile fire that went across the entire length of the fire place, but that was not in the budget. Here's the original design that I put together:

The first stage to this renovation was to remove the tile, drywall and base board surrounding the gas fire. By the way, the massive plant to the left is a plant that we bought 19 years ago when I first moved to Canada. It was about 2 feet tall and has now grown into a monster sprouting it's on little baby. It's so big we need to secure it to the the wall by tying it to the wall mounted speaker!

Once this step was complete I was able to start framing the shelving on both sides. This was fairly straight forward and once the framing was complete I was able to fish the wires for the LED puck lights. I soldered all of the connections to ensure a secure and safe fit.

This step was repeated on the right hand side and then drywall was cut and screwed into the wood frames. I also put drywall across the wall to close off where the old TV was and framed the media centre. I used 1/4" MDF (Medium Density Fibreboard) to give a nice clean finish around the edges of the decorative shelving and media centre. Knowing that I was going to be wall mounting the TV, I added some extra wood joists behind where the TV was to be placed for added strength.

Once the decorative shelves were framed, I also framed the extension on both sides to the mantle. This would later be covered to give the effect of a solid wood mantle.

Before tiling, I decided to finish the decorative shelves by giving two coats of primer and three coats of the same CIL White Melamine Paint that we used for the Kitchen Cabinets. This was applied with a brush and foam roller for a smooth finish. There was much debate about the colour of the inserts, but I was insistent on keeping them white so they would contrast against the tile and also show off items we displayed.

The tile we chose was a 6" x 24" grey wood finish ceramic tile from Lowes (on sale). As I've stated in my other blog, I hate tiling and this experience was no different. I think I counted only 3 tiles that didn't need cutting. The remainder of the tiles had to be cut using a wet saw. Originally we were going to go with a stone finish on the wall, but as we looked around and spoke to different stores, it became evident that stone walls were becoming a bit dated and this type of tile was more in style. Grouting was fairly straight forward and we opted for a light grey grout to contrast the darker grey of the tile. I'm still undecided, but may darken the colour of the grout.

To give the appearance of a wood mantle, we purchased two birch 1/4" plywood sheets from Windsor Plywood which were cut and glued on the top, sides and bottom of the mantle. Once this was installed, I applied two coats of wood stain to darken the wood and then three coats of a satin water-based varnish. To finish the media cabinet, I made a custom door from the left over MDF and then glued some leftover birch plywood and some veneer for the sides. The door was stained and varnished and then I got an off-cut of acrylic for the window. The door is attached to the wooden frame using kitchen cabinet hinges allowing for access to equipment.

I didn't keep track of the budget for this project, but I'm guessing we came in around $500 in total for materials. I knew when we started the project that our original TV would need to be changed and so we upgraded to a Samsung 55" SMART TV. The only thing that's still missing from this project is two mirrors either side of the window. As of June 2017 we are still trying to source some nice round mirrors....

#homeimprovement #fireplace #diy #wallmountedtv #tiling #interiordesign