Well, it is officially 6 days til Christmas and the last weekend before the big holiday celebrations here at Emberly. We decided, rather than be normal sane people, to begin a nice renovation of the master bedroom.

Our bedroom has a closed fireplace which is not usable but has a lot of potential visually, and yet it looks awful. It even has a mantle that was DRYWALLED OVER. Why?! Why?! No one can ever answer that question. There has been a lot of shade and dirty looks shot its way.

Here is what it looked like the day we got the keys to the house:
Finally...it is getting the makeover it deserves! With my husband Scott away sooooo much, he just hasn't had time to work on the house. This holiday is the only time in awhile that he will have a full week off work so we are all up for taking advantage of this break and getting some stuff done around here!

Here is what it looked like after Scott temporarily fixed it the weekend we moved in, to expose more of the brick. We didn't expect to find the mantle and ended up leaving it covered because there was a lot of work involved (gutting lathe and plaster and moving duct work) and we had tons to do the week we moved in, so this wasn't high on the priority list back then.

And here is our mid reno shot. We are still in the stage of staring at it wondering what the heck to do with it. The brick is a newer ugly brick, bricked over the old brick. Do we try to remove the new to salvage the old, while risking losing all of it and thus having to redo the whole stinking thing? We haven't decided yet what we want to do with it. Right now I am stoked about the potential of the mantle (we will build a new one) as a cute shelf in our room.


The venting beside the fireplace is probably going to be moved to the corner of the room. It creates another elbow for the heat, meaning less heat movement but I really don't care. It's ugly as all heck sitting next to the fireplace and I don't want to have to put a box there. lol

Can't wait for the after photos! Give me a few weeks :)

Merry Christmas everyone! Hope your holidays don't involve hammers, but if they do, be sure they also involve some egg nog or hot cider....and perhaps some Bailey's ;)

Cheers,
Samantha