Dining Room Faux Fireplace and More Beadboard Progress

It's starting to get a little exciting here at Twice Remembered because finally we are getting to some projects that are fairly easy and provide some instant visual gratification. You've heard me dreaming out loud {so to speak} for years about how someday we would be installing beadboard throughout the house and for at least a year I've been obsessed with the idea of having a faux fireplace in the dining room. Although it has taken a while, I'm pleased to share with you the big dent we made in these two projects over the weekend.

We are using wooden beadboard sheets {about $25 for a 4'x8'sheet} and to stretch our budget, we simply cut them in half. One sheet of beadboard covers 8 feet of wall

I'm pleased to share with you the big dent we made in these two projects over the weekend.

space. I wanted our beadboard to be taller, though, so I chose wide baseboards, which are just simple 6" wide pine boards. Please note that usually when you buy wood boards, you don't really get the exact width specified on the price tag. Six inch wide boards are really about 5 1/2", I believe. You'll need to take that into consideration if you are looking for a specific measurement for your project. I wanted my beadboard and trim to measure about 58-59" tall from the floor, so when I also included my 5 1/2" wide baseboard, it gave me the height I needed. {5 1/2" baseboard + 48" beadboard + 5 1/2" top trim = 59"}


I bought this mantel on clearance at Lowe's several months ago. It was super cheap at around $25! So cheap, in fact, that I had to buy two! We installed the mantel at the same height as the beadboard trim. To avoid having to make intricate cuts in the trim that would butt up against the mantel, we just installed the mantel right on the trim itself. Nice and clean!


Just for future reference, though, if you are working on a project and find that you need to do some fancy jigsaw cuts, pick up a contour gauge. It molds itself to any surface leaving a perfect template for you to draw around. I found the contour gauge below from DKHardware but we found ours at Home Depot.


After our mantel was in place, we began construction of the rest of the surround. Fireplace surrounds are so easy to build because basically, they are just a series of rectangular boxes. First, we built the 10" wide vertical "legs". Again, they are just hollow boxes that consist of two sides and a front.


Inside the boxes are little support blocks. These were put in place so that we had something in which to nail the boards. Here is a shot taken right before hubs installed the 8" wide "header" - the horizontal top box underneath the mantel shelf.



We then layered 8" wide vertical boards over the leg boxes. We wanted this layer to be flush with the header.

I *thought* we were pretty much finished at this point, so we went ahead and added some vertical finishing trim right beside the 8" wide boards. If you click on the photo below to enlarge, you can see this better.


I loved the result...for a while...


We will be installing some detailed trim right below our wide trim boards...It will look like this. This same finishing trim will go at the bottom of the fireplace header and will wrap around it's sides.


Here is the fireplace as it stands right now but...


soon after we thought we were finished with the surround and hubs was packing up his tools, I realized that what it needed was another horizontal box underneath the header...


Like this! I think the extra box will just balance it all out, and with the addition of the finishing trim both on the fireplace surround and below the beadboard trim, it will be just what I've had in mind all along - a big, chunky, farmhouse style fireplace to compliment our beadboard and big chunky trimwork.


Then there is the question of what to do with the center! Originally, I was going to knock out part of the wall, build a recessed box, and install these realistic, crackling {no heat} electric logs.


But we realized that it would require moving wall studs on a supporting wall, and that was a much bigger project than we wanted to get into right now. Now I'm thinking that I'd love to find an old stove door to install somehow and then either brick out the rest of the "filler panel" {the area around the stove/stove door}, OR use antique ceiling tin as the filler, OR use antique ceiling tin wallpaper. For now, it looks really stark and maybe a little strange, but my wheels are turning with possibilities.

That's where we are right now! We'll continue to wrap the beadboard around the corner, into the living room and foyer, and then down the hallway. We have one more fireplace surround to take on, the one around our real, working fireplace in the living room. Now that we have one nearly behind us, I'm feeling more confident about the next one.

Tomorrow I'll be working on a crafty project using some antique photographs I had printed up. I'll be sure to share it with you on Thursday. Until then, enjoy working on your own home projects! And please, if you have ideas about the center of our dining room fireplace, I'd love to hear them!

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I'm linking this entry up to Transformation Thursday!