Light a fire!

It's done. Finis. Or, I guess I should say...voila!

The fireplace mantel. I did it! Over the holidays I finally put on my getting-messy pants and got down to the basement. In this order I tackled the less glamorous parts of the finish work:

1. put wood filler in the nail holes
2. sanded
3. primed
4. spackled every little imperfection I could find
5. sanded
6. mixed latex paint with this magical stuff (more on that later)
7. coat of paint
8. sanded, filled yet more imperfections
9. coat of paint
10. hauled it up the hatchway and into the house (okay I did not do this part)
11. went to Lowes to buy a nail gun and trim
12. discovered nail gun did not fit adapter to dad's compressor
13. fixed dad's nail gun
14. nailed this sucker in
15. cut trim to many little piece and angles to fill gaps along top and sides
16. more wood filler
17. last coat of paint
18. remove blue painters tape that has been on my dining room floor since sumer 2009...

Hooray!!!

Let's look again at the whole, um, 18 months...First, the before:

Then the during:

And a little behind-the-scenes:

 

And, then the after:

 

Whew!

And now, about that miracle product...

Flood paint additive has a friend in me. See, the woodwork at Holiday House was spray painted (during renovations, when no one lived there). So it's really hard and uniform and perfect. Every time I try to mimic it or touch it up, I get a very rough (literally) approximation. Until now. This paint additive gave me a glass-like finish. I plan to use it for every single project I ever do, forever and ever and ever.

 

Comments

[the cape on the corner]

gorgeous transformation! those subway tiles-wait, are you saying that is paint making that brick look like subway tiles? or am i getting that wrong. whatever it is, it looks fantastic!

[Holiday]

Thanks! Sorry if I was not clear - I actually had it tiled, over the brick. They are cream-colored crackle-finish tiles!

[k]

Beautiful job! I LOVE that subway tile, it looks so clean and modern yet classic at the same time. I understand that this is HARD work, we just redid our fireplace surround last month! Looks like all that work really paid off!!

[The Art of Doing Stuff]

Very nice job! Isn't a nail gun the best invention ever? ~ karen!

[Holiday]

Thanks Karen! A nail gun is great, but my heart belongs to paintable caulk!