We are living the renovation life over here!! Like I mentioned in the last post, we are replacing all of the carpet and tile on our first floor (except the new tile in the mudroom, of course). We are replacing everything with hardwoods except for in the bathroom where we will put new tile. In addition, we are doing a fireplace makeover at the same time! We making a lot of progress with demoing the floors and starting the fireplace. There is no longer ANY carpet on the first floor. Lots of plywood around here. So I’m writing this from my bedroom and we are hanging out in the basement a lot – where we moved our TV from the great room. The fireplace is also completely demoed and Parker has started creating the new fireplace surround, but we need a little help! We have our general design down (which you’ve seen if you follow on instagram), but we aren’t sure if we should go all the way to the ceiling with it or cut it short. Let me show you what I mean:
Here is a look at the fireplace area pre-renovation:
Ok. I think the taller one looks better on paper. However, there are several inspiration pics that I love that don’t go all the way to the ceiling. Here they are:
I think the example right above this is really similar to our layout. We have doors on both sides of the fireplace and our couch is in the same spot. I do realize that both of the examples I gave have some sort of ceiling detail, and we don’t. Thoughts? We do plan to add additional moldings to this room down the road. We will for sure case out the doorways. We’ve also played around with other options. This post showed some other inspiration for moldings in our great room to bring the ceiling down a bit and get rid of some beige. Ok, so think this over and let me know your vote. Take the fireplace all the way to the ceiling or make it more like a three-quarter length 🙂 ??
My first question is: Will you do the same on the other side (Blue Room) of the fireplace, or just the Great Room side? Both pictures have a very bold or dramatic architectural aspect where the fireplace ends and the ceiling begins that are awesome, so if you plan something similar in the future that ties it all together, I vote for ending the fireplace below the ceiling line. If you don’t plan to change anything where the wall meets the ceiling then I would take it all the way up. Because it is a see thru or two sided fireplace I think both sides need to be the same to feature it as one structure. This is my humble opinion Beaner ❤️
Thanks for the feedback Aunt Becky! I totally see what you are saying. The sunroom side will be very similar, but not exactly the same. The ceilings are different in the two rooms, so we can’t really do the exact same things on both sides. We don’t plan to put brick above the mantel in the sunroom. I was concerned about not doing the exact same on both sides at first, but there is really no place in the house where you can see both sides at once. Both sides will be white brick but there will be more detail on the great room side. Right now, we are still undecided about going all the way up or stopping. I am with you that if we don’t go all the way up, it will look a little unfinished where the fireplace meets the ceiling unless we came up with something special there.
I say all the way to the ceiling! 🙂