Beginnings of a Fireplace Makeover

On Monday, I shared the "Before" pictures of our living room and the direction I'm hoping to take to make it over. I also mentioned that a big project in this room is re-doing fireplace. 

We started out with this...an ugly cover, lots of brown, and a taupey-beige mantle.

(Here is another really terrible "Before" picture I took on my good camera. Sorry! Worst blogger ever.)

I painted the mantle a bright white, we painted the walls, and pried off that terrible cover. (We also replaced the floors.) That left us with this...

(You can see a teensy bit of our Goodwill armchair that I scored for $25 and plan to reupholster.)

It's definitely not "styled" or anything, I've just hung my trusty old painting that I love so much, but it looks a heck of a lot better already, if I do say so myself :).

My immediate plans for the next phase of this makeover are to paint the inside of the fireplace black (why do they paint them white in the first place? They always end up looking terrible), and possibly staining the brick to more of a red color so it doesn't blend in with the floor so much. 

Our "ways-off" plans include replacing the mantle with something much more substantial that surrounds the entire fire box and comes down to the hearth. We have also discussed doing some sort of moulding treatment to the wall above the mantle---but we don't know if that's for sure. And of course I need to fully decorate it! I love to decorate mantles. :)

I hope to share more inspiration and details for our mantle makeover sometime next week.

Have a great day!