We have now been in out house for almost six months. We have settled into Whitchurch nicely and have started some projects around the house. This week we are going to give you a couple of little updates; the fireplace in the living room and the master bedroom.

Living room

The first room we painted was our living room. The room was previously mint green below the chair rail and white above, not really to our taste.  We decided to flip the colours to have the white below, we painted this in Crown’s Canvas White with a silk finish.  Above the chair rail we opted for Lopen Taupe from Hemsley Paint.  Hemsley paint is only available from Homebase, it is an ultra matt finish and makes a great and affordable Farrow and Ball alternative.

Fireplace refresh

We are planning on installing real fireplaces and exposing the brick. In the meantime we decided we needed a stopgap solution.  We look at the fireplace everyday and the dated green tile surround just had to go! We opted to replace the tile with a white mini metro tile.  This was a value option that keeps the fireplace light and clean and give it a more modern feel.  We also stained the pine mantle taking it from an orange colour to a darker shade so it doesn’t have such a 1990’s feel.

Plenty of candles

If we are honest nothing beats the feel of a real fire in a house. It’s one of those things that makes a house a home.  We are not going to get our fire this year so we are just going to have to improvise! We might not have a fire but we can have candles… and lots of them (thank you Ikea). The candles give a lovely feel to the room, they also come in handy when we had a power cut a couple of weeks back!

Style it out

We know this isn’t our ideal fireplace but with a bit of styling it holding its own.  We have used a mix new purchases and old favourites to soften the look. As the living room is a very bright room we also have a couple of houseplants.  One thing of interest is the the Concorde artwork – it is over 30 years old and was a retirement present to Rich’s grandfather who was a production manager on the original development of concorde in the 60’s and 70’s.

What do you think?

In total fire fireplace refresh probably cost us £30, not bad for a stopgap solution.  What do you think, do you like or should we have just waited until we could install a full working fireplace?