Fireplace Wall Makeover
Hello! I am back to share another weekend makeover project that we completed in our home. This was one of my favorite projects! It made a big impact and changed the way our home feels. It also added a lot of much needed storage. Hopefully my project can help generate some ideas for changes you could make in your home over a weekend!
Our house has an open kitchen and dining area with a fireplace on one wall. The fireplace creates a focal point for the space, which I wanted to highlight. When we purchased our home, the fireplace was pretty bland and dated looking. It had gold and glass doors with off-white painted brick and plain wall above. There was no mantle and it also had two spaces on each side that were open and felt unused. As you can see below, we also had wall to wall teal carpet!
Our house is a California Ranch style and was built in 1957. However, it had been updated in the 1980’s in a way that did not fit the house. Underneath some bad design choices over the years, the house has a strong Mid-Century feel. We have been working to bring the original look and feeling back, in an updated way. The dining room fireplace wall is the first thing you see from the entry, when you walk into our home, so I wanted it to be highlighted.
Before starting this project, we ended up having a flood in our home and had to replace all of the flooring much sooner than planned. We wanted to keep the tile around this fireplace, if possible. It’s very basic and simple so I saw no reason to change it, however, I hated the rounded corners. Luckily, there was leftover tile in the garage and we were able to replace the two corner tiles! Below you can see the before and after of how the tile looked when we pulled up the carpet and once it was replaced and new flooring laid.
(We also discovered a giant mural under the carpet, which you can see in the before picture, but I’ll save that story for another post!)
Because our house is a ranch, it does not have a basement or an attic. This means that we are short on storage space. I thought that the open areas on each side of the fireplace could be used for added storage. They are not functional for anything else and I do not have a need to keep side chairs there. We are very lucky to have three fireplaces in this house, but none of them have mantles. I wanted a mantle on at least one of the fireplaces for displaying family photos, stockings, etc. and this felt like the right one to do that with.
My ideas for this space that could be done quickly:
Paint the brick and the walls of the open areas.
Add another material above the fireplace. We have been using natural wood as an accent throughout, so possibly wood shiplap or something similar.
Add shelving on one side to display my growing Pyrex collection.
Add a lower cabinet to the other side, along with shelving above for storing wine and barware.
Add a mantle.
Something that helped a lot with getting this project done quickly was buying ready to use items vs. getting something more custom. We purchased a pre-made cabinet from a general supply store, pre-finished shelving, pre-made wine storage boxes and a ready to hang mantle. I had to paint the wine boxes and the cabinet, but that was quick and easy.
My longer term plans for this space:
Get new countertops to go over the new cabinet and also to extend under the shelving on the other side.
Replace the gold and glass fireplace doors with black.
We got really lucky and found some shiplap that had a beautiful, natural charred finish to it. The look of it seemed perfect for our project, and as a bonus it was on clearance! Because we had a small space where we wanted to use this material (only above the fireplace), there was just enough left. This find started our project.
The colors we have used throughout our home are mostly white and black with blue, red and gray accent colors. We also have natural wood and gold accents. I decided to paint the walls black to make them really contrast against all the other walls in this space. I also wanted them to recede so that the fireplace is the focus.
In addition, using black shelving and cabinets against the black walls helps everything to kind of blend. The effect is that these two areas look streamlined instead of busy. The black is also a great backdrop for my Pyrex and glass collection. I painted the brick gray and added gold hardware to the cabinet that matches our kitchen cabinets. Below are some progress pictures.
We completed the fire place wall first, before moving onto each side. My husband already had a mini-fridge that he used for multiple things over the years. We decided to put that under the display shelves for storing beer and soda. Also, we already had a wine fridge that we were able to sit over the cabinet, under the wine and glass storage.
Below is the completed makeover as it looks now.
I am so happy with how these shelves turned out to display my Pyrex collection. My goal with this collection is to create a Pyrex rainbow, so I collect pieces based on color rather than specific patterns or pieces. I am also not a typical collector because I use my Pyrex and having it so close to the kitchen works perfectly. I have been collecting Pyrex for about 15 years. My collection grows slowly because I like to find them out in the wild rather than buying pieces from other vintage sellers or at antique stores.
We plan to add counter top extending over the mini-fridge when we get new counter tops in the kitchen. It will create kind of an ‘L’ shape and resemble this sketch below.
These are the counter top options we have been looking at. I am leaning toward white silestone. The light gray formica under these samples is the countertop we currently have.
This area turned out exactly like I had imagined it. I love the floating mantle. We have plans to switch the gold fireplace doors to a black option. My husband already had the cardboard elephant cut out and had painted it red before we met. He really likes it and this was the perfect spot for it.
After painting the wine storage boxes black, we screwed some glass hanging rails onto the bottom. We also hung a shelf between the hanging glasses and the top of the cabinet for additional glass storage. I love to collect vintage glass, so we have a lot to store and display. We plan to replace this plywood with actual counter top once we get new ones for the kitchen.
Below are some additional before and after pics. I had completely forgotten how this space used to look, so writing this post was a great reminder of how much it has changed. It is such a transformation and, I think, a better use of the available space. I do not miss that teal carpet!
Thanks for reading and following along! Hopefully, we won’t have to wait too much longer for new counter tops and will be able to complete this makeover soon. I will post an update with what we end up choosing.
