Since moving into our current home nearly eight years ago we haven’t really made any changes besides a bit of painting. I’ve been wanting to change the look and feel of our living room, since it is one of the most used rooms in the house. Here are the details of our (relatively) simple living room face lift.

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Full disclosure here – this “little project” took forever to complete and still is not 100% finished. So not to overwhelm my husband with projects, we completed small bits of work at any given time, starting with dismantling the fireplace mantle.

Obviously, it is resoundingly clear that this mantle and hearth was done in the nineties! P.S. that glorious tile also adorns our foyer! I really hated this mantle! The look of it completely screamed home made in the worst way possible!

How surprised were we when the mantle was finally removed and we discovered that it was an antique! The nails were iron and square in shape – which indicates that it was super old – so it was sawed into pieces and quickly discarded!

It’s a good thing that the mantle was removed because the wood in behind was incredibly dry.

Now time for stone!

My original plan was to put tongue and groove pine on this wall – floor to ceiling – but because of the heat put off from the fireplace, my husband said that some sort of stone would necessary.

In order to bring this wall up to fire code we had to replace the drywall with cement board. Easy peasy (best to be safe) and a simple project for me!

After browsing several websites and discovering the overwhelming selection of stone, tile, and brick – we opted for a bit of overstock from my place of employment – which was FREE!

To be honest, I’ve never installed brick or tile myself (nor has my husband)! So this was a new experience for us! After half a days work, three saw blades, and a whole lot of cursing – we accomplished our goal! Doesn’t look half bad either!

Next we put on the pine!

Getting to this stage of the project was what I was looking forward to the most. I knew that adding the pine would make such a statement – even more than the stone facing!

There was a fair bit of excitement in our house for this part of the work because my husband went out and bought both a table saw and a compound mitre saw – just for this job! Cha-ching! $$$$

Such a drastic difference this made! We topped the hearth with 2×12 pine to finish off the look. As you can see my next challenge was deciding on a paint colour for this room!

Paint colour is the most challenging decision to make for me! How about you?! My husband wanted peach, purple, baby-shit taupe – none of which I liked! I have to kind of settle on a colour because the choices were just too overwhelming – and this was it! A neutral greige with a slight greenish undertone to brighten up the room!

After the painting was complete, adding outside corners and quarter round finished off the pine on the fireplace wall. The mantle consisted of a 2×8 pine board and simple black brackets from Amazon.

We treated the pine with Minwax stain in Weathered Oak. The grey tones in the stain are similar to the stone and the paint colour. The moose rack is a piece of family history that absolutely had to be showcased!

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Overall I am really happy with how this project turned out! As a family we spend a lot of time in this room and it was important to me to make this room more our taste!

Stay tuned for further posts detailing the transformation of the built-in hutch, foyer, and additional accents as our living room face lift continues!