Fireplace before and after.

Here is our fireplace area before we spiffed it up:

As dark an outdated as it made the room feel, it looked much worse with all our unorganized junk on it!  I wish I had thought to take a 'before' picture with all our stuff cluttering the shelves...

 But the first thing I did was box up the stuff on the shelves.  I filled TWELVE moving boxes with books, dvds, toys, magazines, games... ! Then we removed the five shelves in each bookshelf.  The boys loved being able to stand up in the bookshelves. :-)  One of the things I really wish we had done is to sand down the varnish before applying the primer.  Even though the primer we used said 'no need to sand'... the paint is nicking off pretty easily :-(  Next time I paint anything varnished I WILL sand or use some kind of chemical to tack it up before priming.  It's just too much work to not do the right way!!!

Then, we taped around the perimeter of the shelves and painted the shelves and mantel "Wool Skein" by Scherwin Williams.  Originally I wanted to paint them white, but then thought that white would look too bright and stark with the rest of the rustic feel in the room.  After that dried, we put up some paintable wallpaper ('ceiling tile') from Lowe's.  I wanted some texture in the back of the bookshelves but wasn't brave enough to do a patterned wallpaper.  It was the first time I'd ever hug wallpaper, and it was such a mess!  Definitely a two person job! We trimmed the edges with an exact-o knife after the wallpaper dried.  When we tried it while it was wet it just tore the 'paper' (which was more like a foam).  When I waited and trimmed it the next day, it was much easier to cut and the scraps peeled right off.  We had to wait 24 hours to let the wallpaper dry well, and then we taped the perimeter of the back of the bookshelves for painting prep.  Soon after we started taping over the wool skein paint, we noticed it was pulling off with the tape!  I think part of the reason was that the paint hadn't set long enough (most 'blue tape' suggest you wait 14 days after painting before you tape up.)  Live and learn!  We had a lot of touch ups to do.  Then Dave tried painting over the wallpaper with "Gateway Grey" by SW (a light olive greenish grey...)  free-handed.  He's usually really awesome at painting straight lines, but it was so hard to do with this bumpy texture!  The next day I picked up some yellow 'delicate' tape from the SW store and it worked much better!  I also read this tutorial from The House of Hepworths about how to make perfectly clean lines when you paint.  This year, I'm thankful for Pinterest. :-)

We also bought and installed these fireplace doors from Lowe's.  I loved the shade of dark brown, and also the arch, which mimics the arches at the tops of the bookshelves.  The other banged up cage with the shiny gold handles had been bothering me since we got the house!  And bugs kept coming in through the chimney... I don't think my photos do it justice, but these doors alone make a huge difference in the look and feel of this area!  And so much more practical!  So... here are the after photos!  Unfortunately, we have a big T.V. in front of one bookshelf.  Not ideal from a design stand-point, but it meets our needs. Yes, I said 'needs'. :-)

I wanted to keep the shelves simple: mostly books and family photos.  We only put back four shelves instead of five.  I figured, the less shelves, the less junk setting on the shelves... and the more of the pretty background we can see!  I still want to play around with the photos and books a bit... but for now this is it!

If there are rules about matching frames or consistency in all black and white or all color photos I did not follow them.  The very bottom shelf holds those cheap baskets from Target to hold toys, and the second up is kid books.

The shelf behind the T.V. holds dvds and the shelf hidden by the T.V. holds games...  This was a great chance for me to purge a bunch of dvds, cds, games, and books we no longer use.  If it wasn't practical or pretty, I didn't put it back on the shelves!  The mantel decor is pretty minimal right now, but I CAN'T WAIT to decorate it for CHRISTMAS!!! :-)