Summer Cottage Style Faux Fireplace

Hello, friends!  First of all, just a note to let you know that I'm having so many annoying issues with my new Wordpress blog  {loading slowly, interface troubles, etc., etc.} that I've decided to just to keep blogging  HERE with Blogger right now. I don't know if I'll ever get my Wordpress problems worked out, and frankly, I don't have time to work on them. I don't want you to have to deal with slow loading pages and images, so excuse my crazy while I tell you that I'll be continuing to update here instead of at the new site until further notice.

So, do you remember forever ago when our dining room looked like this?  It was when we first moved into the house and I was really into jewel tones.  The photo Perhaps in the fall we'll draw ourselves a roaring chalk firebelow was pre-remodel.  Just a standard little dining space with a door to the laundry room right in the middle of it!  That door was quite silly, especially considering the fact that there was another door to the laundry room in the hallway.  So we decided to wall the dining room access door up....

and build a faux fireplace in it's place.  This wall really needed to be weighted with something that would visually balance out the red cabinets on the the opposite end of the room. A fireplace was the perfect solution.  We started with a mantel I found on clearance at Lowes...

and just began building a beefy box frame out of pine boards of various widths.

Somewhere along the line, I found this old black cast iron surround at an antique shop for about $30.  I was hoping it would somehow work with our faux mantel.

And it did!  Since I wanted to make the fireplace look as realistic as possible, I painted the inside of the surround with black chalkboard paint. {Perhaps in the fall we'll draw ourselves a roaring chalk fire.} And to keep a light & airy, vacation-ey beach feel, I painted the cast iron surround white.

I just love how substantial the vertical 'legs' of  the fireplace appear.  We just kept building up and layering boards and trim pieces until we got the look we wanted.

The area around the surround is actually heavy textured paintable wallpaper that looks like tin.  Convincing, yes?  The color I chose is called 'Malted Milk'... it reminds me of sand. ;) {You may notice a gap or two at the bottom near the floor - our floor is terribly uneven in this area and we'll have to fill it in somehow the future.  I had kind of forgotten about it until seeing these photos!}

Isn't it funny how a  fake fireplace can really warm up a summer style cottage dining room?

P.S.  I made the little banner for a party for my girls recently... I haven't had the heart to take it down yet. ;)