Mantle Birds

I'm very pleased with how the refinished mantle came out. I used furniture refinisher and some wipe on poly. Notice the cigarette burns on the mantle - pure character.

The birds have been found at local shops, antique stores near Shenandoah National Park, and gifts scrounged from ebay. We're always on the look out for our new collectibles.

Uber TV invades the house

Reading houseblogs and other design sources, the TV is something to be hidden in a deep dark corner of the house out of view. Yet when you watch TV it's supposed to be convenient. Hmph. The 13' width of the rowhouse limited our TV space to one of the side walls. Add the fact that bookshelves fit so perfectly into the niches to the side of the (non-functioning) fireplace, above the fireplace was the only good place for the TV. While we admire our new 50" TV nightly, we get a crick in our neck while laying on the couch.



We also decided to refinish the mantle instead of painting it white. After stripping the brown paint off the top, we were happy to see it was oak instead of the pine that I expected. There are multiple cigarette burns around the edge. To me, this just adds to the charm. After 5 coats of poly, the mantle looks HAWT when coupled with our $1 a sq/ft subway tile. We also decided to collect little birdies with the mantle serving as a great perch.

Die Wall, Die!

This is what happens when you forget to add some thingamabobbers behind the wall before drywalling and have to cut a hole into your newly painted wall. The 50" uber TV will be mounted this week!

We also ordered the hardwood floors. It will take until Mid-July to arrive, but we think it's worth it. Check out it's Imperial Teak hawtness. We had talked about Brazilian Cherry before but thought they may be a bit too red'ish for my tastes. After that we liked Brazilian Walnut, but the teak was a little bit cheaper, less red, and we just liked the grain better. Who knows, maybe we'll change our mind in another week because we're finicky like that.



The Queen's brother helped out this weekend by painting the ceiling. He succesfully coated the ceiling, and his face with paint splatter. He did a great job on both accounts, and his help was greatly appreciated. :-)

Gratuitous Loki shot!

Hungarian Bookshelves & Subway Tile Fireplace

The Hungarian shelves and the white subway tile in the fireplace are finally in. The fireplace was non-operating, thus tiling it over wasn't an issue. We thought we were going to paint the mantle white, but after looking at it with the white tile in we decided it was too cold looking. We'll just refinish it, with the wood adding a bit of warmth to the otherwise white and silver palette.



The shelves were much easier to do than standard bookshelves and we like the modern look. All the online materials I saw had them unpainted, but after a few coats of white semi-gloss they look like a million bucks. We used sanded plywood instead of MDF, as the ends are free hanging so we needed the extra strength. The front edge of the wood is covered with a strip of melamine. I'd never thought of an iron as a device used in shelf building, but indeed it is.

Over the fire place is the electrical and cable line. When we order the TV I'll know exactly where to place the outlets in relation to the wall bracket, so for now the locations are notional.

I'd say it looks better than it was before, especially with the ceiling fan gone too.