Fireplace- Fun way to make it cozy!

Hi friends! It has been a little bit since I've done a little project so thought I would document it and share here. Have you all missed the blog? I have! Time has just gotten away from me and my day job is so busy I haven't had the time or energy to do a project.

So I was inspired by a fun photo on Pinterest (of course right) so I got the supply list out and in the truck we went! We needed a piece of plyboard so we found the perfect piece at Lowes and were about to grab it and go. It was just the right size for the height, we did have to cut some of the width but it was easy peezy. The piece of wood was the perfect fit to just slide right in the fireplace opening and sit snug enough to not need any additional support. If you are thinking of doing a similar project, you can totally add magnets to the back of the plyboard to stick to the metal fireplace insert if yours is. Otherwise you may have to get a little creative with solutions on getting it to stay. Luckily the plyboard and the finished project are not heavy.

So we grabbed the plyboard and I painted one side black as our background. Here is how it looked. My photo skills during the process were off a bit so thats the best I got. So I had a Valspar black trim paint that we used for our doors and decided to use it. It works perfectly. My lazy quick process was to dump some paint on the board and I got to rolling.

So the plan was to use some of the logs the kids and I found in the backyard. We just cleared out some dead trees in the backyard and have lots of limbs down to spare. Turns out the cedar limbs were the easiest pieces for me to handle on the saw. I tired on of the thicker big logs but with its curve and solidity, the saw kicked on me a bit so that was that.

We gathered all the cedar limbs we could find and striped the layers off the outside. This was fun and the kids loved helping with that task.

Here is my saw setup. When I thought about this project, little did I know it was going to be so physically demanding. It was hard work holding those limbs and slicing those little pieces up. I am feeling my arm muscles today that I apparently haven't used it a long while.

As I was cutting the slices, I realized it was going to take a lot of slices to fill that board. The process was cutting and laying the pieces down as I cut so we knew just how many we needed. It took a bit but we got that board filled and thats when the fun started. One thing I would suggest that I thought about after the fact is to keep the pieces on the board. We took the pieces off as we got set up to glue them on. I would suggest keeping the pieces on the board when placing them.

The kids and I sat down and got to piecing them on the board. I used E6000 and added a little dot on each piece and stuck away. We tried to keep them tight to make it look full. It took us a little bit but we got them all on there. We ended up having a few pieces left over.

The moment of truth came and the pieces were set and we were able to place it. Here is what it looked like at this moment.

As much as I love the stencil we did around the fireplace the moment I added it, I didn't like it. I was sad for a moment thinking I would need to take it down and give this project up but we decided we didn't LOVE the stencil much as it didn't really go with the theme of the house. We decided to paint over the stencil. I played with painting it back white and then we had a few people suggest black.

SOLD! Black it was. So I grabbed my paint I used for the plyboard and added a few coats to over that stencil and here is the final look. It really did make a big difference and calmed the look down a bit. So bye bye stencil and hello cozy fireplace! The best part is that in using the cedar the house smells amazing! I also added the rest of the limbs in the insert so they are back behind the plyboard. So what do you think? Do you like it better with the black or would you have kept the stencil also? Yall know I love to hear from you. :)