Fireplace

Yesterday was a bit of a loss: A group of residents got together yesterday morning and decorated four Christmas trees for the building. One over each entrance door and one in each of the sitting rooms beside the entrances.

Joanne R. and I went to Chapters Friday night and I found another J.D. Robb book for my collection on sale for $6.99 :-) So that took care of Friday night and Saturday afternoon.

After I finished the book, I started work on the fireplace for the Bombay house. When I first got it years ago, I stained some of it but it just wasn't speaking to me until last night when I decided to do it in black and ivory white.

 This is the Jamestown fireplace by Houseworks (#2403). It's a big fireplace (6" wide by just over 4" high) but I needed a big one for a reason you'll see at the end of this post.

Here I've coloured over the stain with black marker (fortunately originally done with a furniture marker from Dollarama so it still absorbed the black).

I printed some brick from Jim Collins' site

This fireplace is designed so the firebox is open from the back - makes it a lot easier to install the brick.

 After the brick was installed, I painted all the trim ivory white. Once that was dry I gave all the painted and stained areas two coats of satin varnish.

Then I installed Houseworks #2749 glowing embers.

Here it's in place in the Bombay living room.

When a dear family friend died years ago, his widow gave me the working miniature brass clock on the mantle. It's very precious to me and I needed a large fireplace so it wouldn't look too out of scale.

Here I've added the Reutter firescreen and tools. (I was positive I had two sets of these but the only one I could find was in the Victorian parlour so I've moved it to the Bombay house.)

In addition to all the laundry, I've accomplished quite a bit of cleaning today and have managed to get all the mini-related "stuff" off the kitchen counter and have just about got it all out of the living room. Still have the paperwork to tackle and to decide on my gift for our club Christmas party on Tuesday and get some ornaments together (mini, of course) for our Christmas tree draw.