So there’s this one time where I used to share our home renovation projects on this blog – which has now become the blog of Emerald. Sorry everyone… but hey I’ve got a new home project post.

It started back in the summer where I threw out the idea of painting our fireplace on social media. I’ve thought about painting it from day one when we moved in, but was having a hard time committing since you can’t really un-paint brick. So thankfully – the social media agreed and said to go ahead and paint it, and so we did. Then a few months later, it looked like this and this. Then I raked in Drew’s help via strong muscles and no fear of heights and we finished off the painting part. Then it came time to stain the wood a darker tone which also took longer than we thought since the color wasn’t getting dark enough. Then we decorated it for Christmas – so then I had to wait to take down all the decorations before I took these photos. So what you have all been waiting for… our finished fireplace (well and maybe it’s not 100% finished because I’d like to get rid of the brass, but for now we are calling it done).

Sidenote – no our house is never that clean, it lasted about five minutes I’d say. And yes, Emerald is allowed to have toys, we keep them in the corner so they are kind of hidden, but I limit the color schemes, well I try too!  Seriously, why do all baby toys have to be ugly primary colors?!

So overall, having a baby slows down your home renovation projects. One project per year is all we might get in now – luckily we worked like crazy before she was born! Next up is making some baby gates and then installing our faux wood tiles we won like 2 years ago.

Project Details: Behr Ultra Paint + Primer in Ultra White Semi-Gloss finish was used on the fireplace, and no I didn’t prime it separately, who has time for that? The stain was Minwax Polyshades in Royal Walnut with a Satin finish.