Fireplace plans...
In a few months time, I'm moving in with my partner Jake and we have so many renovation plans in the works. I currently rent and he owns his house, so it's only sensible that I would get away from the rental market and move into his where we will own the place. It's really exciting being able to do whatever we like renovation wise, although I've done an awful lot to my current home having the freedom with my landlords to do so, having ownership of a house is a whole new ballgame. I've always wanted a real fireplace!
Jakes house is a new build and we both love houses with lots of character, as well as sitting in front of a roaring fire, so this lead to the decision to build a faux wall, and install a flue on the outside of the house, meaning that we can have a log burner inside. Jake has the ability to build this himself, with his brother in law who installs chimneys professionally for a living - so although it's quite a pricey venture, we are saving lots of money doing it ourselves. The wall is currently underway which you may have seen if you follow me on instagram, but I thought that I would share a little vision board I've put together with what kind of look we're aiming to create with the fireplace.
We are yet to choose the hearth and brick slips for the fireplace chamber, but I think brick slip wise, I want something traditional and with a red base like pictured. For the hearth, I'm really not sure what we will end up going for, but I do like the Umbrian Limestone Tiles that I've included in the vision board. I think we'll look at samples of that or similar and decide from there. We really wanted Engineered Wood Flooring in here which would have looked beautiful, but as if’s such a big space, we decided to opt for a laminate flooring that replicates it. So the stone we go for should look lovely with it.
The details...
The faux wall is being built in the centre of the living room wall, either side we plan to put in some alcove shelving and cupboards at the bottom for storage. We've already bought our mantle which is the one pictured in the vision board above, it's the Focal Point Regent White Fire Surround from B&Q - however we managed to nab it on Facebook marketplace for £40. It looks completely brand new, what a bargain. Our log burner has also been purchased, and again it's the same one pictured in the vision board. It's the Newburn Idyll Wide from Stove World UK and it's a beauty! Log burners can be so spenny, but we wanted to spend less than £800 so we managed to narrow down our options to four choices, and we decided that this one was our favourite.
Another feature we really want is a framed tv above the fireplace. I'm sure everyone knows how popular the framed Samsung TVs are, however we cannot justify the price of those. We already have a normal Samsung TV that's brand new, and that we love and it has superb picture quality - so to save the extra and unnecessary ££, we are going to build a frame and DIY it ourselves. I will share details on this in the future when it's done, I'm really excited to see how it all turns out. I was quite tempted to put a mirror above the mantle, but for practicality, our tv needs to go there as there's not really anywhere else for it to go.
I can't wait to get it all finished and share the final look with you. If you have any recommendations for places to shop brick slips or hearths, do let me know!
