Jamie’s Revamped Fireplace

Well, we moved house at the end of last year and I now have enough projects to last me a lifetime!!  It’s been difficult to know what room to start in first as there isn’t one room that doesn’t need attention!  Wanting to do everything at once I’ve made a start on lots of areas but not yet finished anything!   Possibly not the best bit of planning on my part but can’t help being impatient and excited at having a new house!!

I’ve finally got a grip of myself and am forcing myself to focus on finishing one room at a time.  My youngest son had the worst room in the house so this is where we have started.

This picture was taken on the day we moved in and shows it as it was before we did anything ….mess and all!!!!

Jamie has his heart set on a Star Wars themed room!!!  So far we have stripped out the fitted wardrobe that dominated the room, removed all the wallpaper (re-plastered one wall where all the plaster came off with the wallpaper!) and striped out the old carpet.  With a very tight budget we have decided to paint everything including the floor and by going for white this has immediately made the room feel fresh.  The main feature in the room is the fireplace and this is where all that dabbling in crafty creative hobbies has really come in useful.

When we took the carpet up we discovered that the tiles on the hearth were either broken or missing.  The picture below shows the fireplace as I prepared to restore it.  As it isn’t a working fireplace I figured I didn’t have to worry about using any particularly special kind of tiles so thought I’d give mosaic tiling a go… having watched Kirstie Alssopp’s “Homemade Home”!!!

Two days later this is how it ended up!  My first attempt at mosaic tiling!!!  I used mirrored glass along with some of the old broken original tiles to create my picture and this really makes the fireplace come to life as the light is reflected back into the room.  I was also trying to incorporate Jamie’s space-age Star Wars theme but without losing sight of our beautiful 1920’s house…

It’s not perfect by any means when you look really close.  I was working with tiles of different depths which does give an uneven surface but I decided that this didn’t much matter as the light gets reflected off at all angles and just adds to the texture.  So anyway, I’m happy and Jamie is getting more and more excited as his room starts coming together… just wish there was more time in the day to get it all done!!!

And closer still!!

Will post again once I’ve painted up his bedroom furniture and sorted out the Star Wars wall art…