Before and After Party: A favorite!

Hello all! It’s time for the next Before and After Party! Whoot! This time I’m showing you an oldie (it’s been done for a few years now) but it’s one of my very, very favorite transformations in our house. LOVE.

We have a fireplace in our bedroom, and yes, it’s fanfreakingtastic. Really. It was all hubby’s idea. The day we decided to add it in to our house plans, I was huddled in a corner, biting my nails, shaking, freaking out about the added expense.

But yet again…he was so right. I end up saying that way more often than I’d like.

We LOVED the mantel and surround on the fireplace -- it was nice and beefy:

I just don’t know what I was thinking with that tile. It was peach:

Because my father-in-law was a tile extraordinaire, we asked for his help to redo it and make it more us. Cause peach isn’t us.

He and his assistant did SUCH a fantastic job, I love it so much still. My original plan was to do glass mosaic glass tiles – and then I priced out the glass tiles I wanted, and whoosh, it was going to be crazy expensive (like $600) to do this small space.

Plan B: Lowe’s. :)

I found a perfect alternative for only $10 a square foot:

It’s a mix of greens, rusts, browns and greys and I’m telling you, it’s SO gorgeous. Oh, I love it so!

Because you can cut the sheet the tiles lay on before installing, we only ended up needing about eight 12 by 12 sheets of tile.

For the hearth, it got even better. I found slate tiles for just over $2 each:

Oh the colors are luscious, and they match the mosaic tiles perfectly.

So the total cost for this project was just over $100 for tile. SCORE! (And a few bucks more for the grout.)

My father-in-law took the old tile off before reinstalling the new stuff – and it wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. I was nervous about that part, but it came off so easily, they were able to use the old board for the new tile.

One thing to consider when using slate – each tile will vary in thickness, so be careful when installing. If you look close, you can see how the tiles toward the front are thicker than those in the back:

You don’t notice it unless you’re looking at it a certain way:

But if you use this on a floor, it’s something you’ll want to watch.

We also sealed the tile after everything was installed (you need to wait a certain amount of time before doing so, check the instructions) – I absolutely recommend doing this because it really brings out the colors in the tile and makes them even more deep and beautiful!

The last step -- those (BLINDING!) brass bars. They came right off – if you have them check to see if yours pop off. They are held on with magnets on the back:

You’ll just have the black fireplace behind it, so you can just take them off and leave it at that. We thought the bars made the fireplace look just a bit more finished, so I just spray painted them with oil-rubbed bronze paint:

Even though the bars get hot, the spray paint has held up great! I thought I’d have to use a high heat paint, but the ORB works just fine. It’s held up for years now.

And now we have a fireplace that is just our style, and it’s one of our favorite before and afters:

You can see I also changed out the light and you can see more about that here. The art above the fireplace is made from canvases and wallpaper and you can see that here.

It’s an oldie but goodie but I love it so much I figured it was worth mentioning again.  :)

Our fireplace before:

And after my thrifty tile shopping and my father-in-law’s mad skills:

And the wide before shot:

And the after, with a plethora of Where’s Waldo changes:

:)

So it’s time to see your projects! Can’t wait to see!

Remember, be sure to link the html to your post, not your blog! The linky will be open for a week, so if your post isn’t ready, you can always link up later.

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Have fun!! :)

And GOOOOOO BUTLER BULLDOGS!!!