Gates Reno

Hi there, long time no see. Sorry about that. There are several reasons why I was absent for so long:

1) For a while, there just wasn’t any work going on (or nothing worth writing about anyway), and I got out of the habit of posting

2) When work started up again in full force, I was incredibly busy with other things

3) By the time I wasn’t ridiculously busy anymore, there was an overwhelming amount of blogging to catch up on, and being an anal retentive perfectionist, I felt like if I couldn’t recap everything, there was no point in starting

4) I was a bit burned out

Mostly, it was #4. Going through a renovation is difficult. Reliving every aspect of it for others can be draining.

So, I’ve decided to go against my nature and jump back in with something, one small thing, that was just completed. I’ll back track and catch up when I can.

Out of the five fireplaces left in our house when we bought it (all identical), only one had been painted.

It was located in the front of the garden floor, and as luck would have it, our plans called for moving that fireplace to the back of the floor, in what would be the dining room. This would make it much easier to strip, since it had to be removed from the wall anyway. Its future location was in the old kitchen, where the old stove was.

It was stripped and cleaned beautifully. Our guys built out the wall so that it would look like an actual fireplace, rather than just being ornamental, and stuck it on the wall. The guy who installed it spent an entire day getting it just right.

I think it turned out great. Of course, it’s now so clean that it makes the other four fireplaces look dingy and yellow!