Hello my Pretties!  I’ve missed you this week – seriously.

It’s been a bit of all work and no fun, and by fun, I mean chatting with all of you, of course!  We live in the real world though (don’t we all?!) and in that world the work that pays the bills often gets first slot over the work that feeds the soul.  Alas, in the perfect scenario there is room for both, and that’s what I aim for.  How ’bout you?

Progress is being made though!  Yippee!

Here’s where my fireplace and wet bar area started – (sadly) these are legit photos, my friends.

As a Mother’s Day present I asked my hub to redo the fireplace by cleaning it and painting the inside for me.  He did it within days!  All I had to do was pick out the goodies I wanted inside.  Easy, right?!  That was seriously 3+ years ago.

My fireplace became the dogs napping area, toy storage and basically a black hole.

The wet bar, right next to the fireplace became a dumping ground for errant remotes, dvd’s, bottles, anything and everything!!

ENOUGH!

I started by visiting Korth’s Patio and Fireplace where the ladies there helped me to narrow down the gabillion choices.  No, I didn’t want logs.  Yes, glass.  Yup, my fireplace is pretty big… What to do with that?  They suggested that I get a long fire pan to span the width (mine was $315 and custom made) and then have a steel fabricator build something to raise it up a few inches since I wanted the flame closer to the middle of the box.

After much deliberation, I ended up buying 12 large, fire retardant bricks from a masonry shop nearby instead of getting another custom piece made.  $40 dollar fix!  Holla!

Then, with heat safe spray paint the whole inside and bottom got a fresh coating of black paint.

My father in law, who is super handy connected the gas line for me and all that was left was filling the whole thing with pretty rocks.

1 20lb bag of lava rocks for the very bottom – $20

2 10lb bags of black glass – $100

1 20lb bag of sand – free

4 Geoshapes, hexagons – $65

I decided to paint the back wall of the wet bar the same gray as the fireplace to give it a moodier vibe.

Easy fix – Change out your outlets or light switches to match the wall color!

I found this amazing gold gilded light fixture on ebay from a seller in Germany.  I “made an offer” and won!

The gold mirror I had was a buy from Bombay Company years and years ago – remember them??

Now the whole area looks like this…

A vast improvement, if I do say so myself!

What else?  Some styling is needed, of course, maybe a few shelves, hardware for the drawers would be nice and I’d like to add one more color of glass (once I figure out which one)!

I’m making progress on those resolutions little by little!

Have a wonderful weekend!  And if you get a quick second let me know how you’re coming along on your projects!  I’d love to share!

Happy Creating!  Jessica