Fireplace Fix-it

When we moved into our house, we pulled out an outdated, out of code, wood burning insert from our fireplace.  You can read more about that here.  My idea was to just have an open brick fireplace to put candles in and maybe occasionally burn on a burn day.

After pulling and lugging the 500 pound beauty, my husband finally got the insert out.  Only to find out that there is not a lovely brick fireplace behind it.  It is lined with sheet metal and has a huge smokestack in the middle of it.

Apparently, the original fireplace was gas.  It had been taken out and replaced with the wood burning insert, which was also too large for the space.  So now to bring it up to code and return it to its original gas fireplace, it will cost us almost $4000.  Not happening now.

So as you can see, it was covered up with a bunch of stuff on the fireplace.  I never really meant for all that stuff to go there.  When we were cleaning and prepping for move in, I put the chest up there so I could clean the carpets.  It never came down.  Since the fireplace wasn't going to be repaired any time soon, I thought I better make a more permanent fix to cover up it's ugliness.

I went to Walmart and I bought 2 yards of their burlap fabric.  I love this stuff and at $2.97 a yard, you really can't have too much.

I measured and sewed the top into a loop and fit it into a tension curtain rod.

I found a vintage French typography photo that I liked and I printed it out.  It was printing out too small to transpose onto the burlap so I had to get creative.  I blew the jpg up as large as I wanted and I printed it out.  Needless to say, it came printed out in pieces, spread out over about 6 pages.  I cut out the actually typography areas and taped them all together, like a puzzle.

I had a large board that I use for jigsaw puzzles that was the perfect size.  I laid out the pieces and laid my burlap over the top.

Burlap is so easy to transpose because you can see right through it.  So with my handi-dandi Sharpie, I traced the lettering.  I went back through and colored it in.

Cost of project:
$6 burlap
$8 tension rod
____________
$14 total!


It looks so much cleaner without all the clutter in front of the fireplace!  Now I can actually use my hearth for decoration instead of just dusting it all the time!

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