Getting rid of (the same) paper blinds

When the paper blinds came down in the kitchen, they went right back up in the basement. They came in handy over the holidays giving our downstairs guests a little more privacy, but now that everyone is gone they've gotten really obnoxious to look at. With the hassle of having them up outweighing any benefits, it's time for them to go.

Painters tape and all.

Thankfully the basement door was a little easier to plan around, and a simple curtain rod with blackout curtains looks a lot better, while also helping insulate the door a little bit. I should have picked out wider panels though. Probably should have washed them too...

Not a great photo. Still looks better.

The original post-drywall white blinds got left up since they can be clipped up but brought down if needed without interfering with anything. Plus, they felt like they were really stuck on the frame to the point of not coming off w/o taking some paint with them, and I'd like to go a few weeks without having to touch anything up down here.

Things are slowly rounding into shape around here. Slowly.

Tiling a floating hearth

I was dubious about the weird dimensions of our hearth factoring into finding tiles that work, but it turns out a 7 inch depth and 5 inch height was actually just about perfect for 12” sections of mosaic tile. Which is good, b/c 6 of these cost almost twice what it cost to get 30 tiles to cover the rest of the fireplace and we went with one of the cheaper options. Jeez.

Shiny

Laying these out, I’m wondering if we’ve made a mistake getting glass tile to put on the hearth. I don’t think we’ll be using the fireplace much so these changes have been mostly cosmetic, but it occurs to me I still should have checked to see if these are fireplace appropriate. I’m relatively sure these will be fine though. 

Thank god, everything worked.

Anyway, without borders or bullnose my plan was to square each corner. Tile along the outside and then fit the top over the edges, and hope with grout things looked okay. Thankfully my test cuts were successful, and I was off to the races. Even with the kids downstairs with me this entire thing took less than an hour; only having to cut a straight edge a couple of times meant a pretty quick job.

Square enough for my tastes at least.

Things squared up pretty well, to the point where I don’t think there are any obvious errors that I will end up staring at every time I walk by, unlike the old backsplash (I chipped a tile right over the sink and didn’t notice until it was too late, and then that’s all I could see). Grout seems to have the ability to make those imperfections stand out though, so we’ll see after the next step. A few passes with a sanding sponge, a little grout, some caulk around the wall, and I think we can officially move the fireplace remodel into the “done” category.

Goodbye bricks

Take a good last look

Apparently I was right about having a bug to change the fireplace, b/c a week later I’ve got drywall over it ready to prime for some peel & stick tiles. So much for waiting for Christmas, although let’s see how long it takes to get the rest of this done. 

That went surprisingly quick.

I did not think the white brick was too bad. But after redoing everything else, painted brick just didn’t quite vibe with what we were putting together in the basement. So after a lot of research on renovating brick fireplaces, I came up with the current plan and the wife agreed.

So quick I ended up doing more.

Which, thank god, b/c for a while it looked like we were going to try and thin set the entire thing and then tile it with large tile. Which would have looked good (probably) but the idea of trimming large-format tile to fit into all the corners and crannies of that fireplace had me shaking my head. I had a hard enough time with tile that fit around our kitchen just about perfectly. Turns out it was much easier to just cover it in left over drywall and prep it for peel & stick. Like, “less than an afternoon’s worth of work with some football on in the background” easier, just the way I like it.

This is actually an improvement, believe it or not.

In fact, things went so well I surprised myself by diving into taping and mudding the corners where everything meets too. So now we have a big green fireplace instead of a white brick one. I think I actually like it better this way, which is the theme for the entire basement at this point. But the corners are much cleaner at least, b/c the rough spots from not knowing how to transition from drywall to brick aren’t a problem anymore. I should have taken more “before” pictures, some of that work was truly horrible. But we’re in decent shape now I think. Some primer, some level lines, and we might be good to go.