The back of our house gets tons of sunshine. That sun can heat up the main floor to a pretty high temperature. Even in the winter, it can get up to 78-80 degrees despite the below freezing temperature outside. What that means for the thermostat is that, for the middle part of the day, it reads a temperature too high to kick the heat on. Meanwhile, in the walkout basement (where Grandma lives) it stays cold. I'm not about to turn the thermostat up higher than what the sun is naturally doing so we decided to install a fireplace down there for her. The least complicated option was electric. Also, we are about to turn on the solar panels we had installed so why not use the sun to heat the basement too?
The outside wall, opposite her bed, has two windows with enough space in between for what we had in mind. I had already mounted her tv there so it was the obvious place for the fireplace. The wires hanging down from the tv has been bugging her since the day I put it up so I was glad to be fixing that issue at the same time. Here's the before picture.
I called an electrician to ask about installing a dedicated line, strictly for the fireplace. Once we had that appointment set up, I got to work building some framing. I only put up the top and sides while we waited for the fireplace to arrive. Then, once the unit was here, I got started on the framework to mount it. It's a very slim piece so I just put up a 2 x 3 directly onto the wall to make sure it was super secure. It came with a mounting bracket, which I installed onto the 2 x 3. Of course, as soon as it was up, we plugged it in. It's so pretty!
This is when I realized I needed another outlet behind the tv, so I asked the electrician to add that to the job. He pointed out one more thing that I would have realized eventually but didn't notice in the planning stages. That existing outlet under the fireplace would need to be bumped out to be flush with the fireplace wall. Okey dokey! Time for more framing.
My poor, excellent electrician was so upset by my lack of "to code" building and kept trying to convince me to change my plan. I had to remind him of everyone's frustration that nothing in this walkout basement was done to code and if I were to start trying to make it right and pull permits and whatnot, I would be in for a whole lot more work. He probably had a hard time walking away from this when his part was finished but I won't fault him. I paid him a lot of money to fix all of the not-to-code stuff that went on in the electrical panel before we moved in here so at least that and the new outlets he put in are perfect. To be fair, he was only trying to look out for me and help me in building something that will not cause any future issues. However, the things that bothered him don't matter on a silly (and very small) fireplace wall. Also, he kept forgetting that I wasn't building it the way he was picturing I would. I wanted to keep the tv mounted directly to the wall and leave an opening behind it. I didn't want to use drywall to cover the framing either. I wanted to use hardboard. Anyway! Once he left, I put up a bit more framing and then started on the finishing touches. I was so excited getting started I forgot to take more pictures.
Here's the top half covered with more framing behind it to add a mantle later, if we choose to. Also, you can see the dedicated line the electrician installed to the right of the fireplace and the bumped out outlet below it.
I knew that, if there were ever an issue in the future, I would need to access a small screw to the left of the fireplace that allows the front cover to be pulled off. That made it a bit complicated over there. I installed a small push panel so that we could open it and get a screwdriver in there.
The next part took forever! I painted the hardboard matte black and the trim gloss black. It took days of cutting, painting, waiting for the paint to dry and putting the boards up. I think we changed the plan of the design about 5 different times. After the first few times, I decided to just put stuff up, see how it looked and then go from there. While I worked, we kept the fireplace going because it's even more beautiful with the black background!
To blend in nicely, we bought a black outlet and outlet plate. I love an easy wiring job. I also love the contrast of the matte black with glossy black trim. I'm going to have a lot of touch up painting to do!
So much cutting, painting and drying!
I spent a lot of time stepping back and waiting until I knew exactly how I wanted to hang the trim. What I knew for sure at this point was vertical stripes would go from the top of the fireplace, down. From the fireplace up, I couldn't decide on diagonal stripes or vertical stripes all the way up. I wanted diagonal but was dreading all of those cuts.
After several weeks, I finally just decided to jump in and do the work. It took two and a half days of working in between other things. There was so much measuring, cutting and painting! While I worked, my mother-in-law enjoyed pointing things out to me. I ignored most of it but not when she saw me lose track of which pieces went where over and over again. She told me I should number them and she was so right!
I don't love painting trim. It's pretty awful. It takes a lot of patience and time. It's totally worth it though!
Here's the first piece...
Here and there, I would find a cut that was a bit off and I could trim it down. Sometimes, however, the cuts were too short and I'd have to start over. Here's where it got interesting. While I was putting the correctly cut boards up, I looked at the pattern that was emerging and I liked it very much.
I decided to just match the pattern all the way up. In this next picture you can see what I did behind the tv. I left a rectangular hole for the tv bracket and all of the cords. The hole also makes it so that the tv can be pushed even closer to the wall since the bump out on the back of it can slide into the space.
Once I had one side finished, it was actually a lot easier to do the other side. However, I messed up in where along the vertical the trim was going. It's hard to explain so I'll just say I had some fixing to do since the measurements were so far off. What a pain!
I took one more break from this before finishing because I was so close and yet so far away from the final product. I'm glad I did. I finished it with renewed patience today and I absolutely love how it turned out. What a transformation!
I almost can't believe I did this. I love when I have an idea in my head and then it comes to life. This time, it ended up even better than what I was picturing. I need to move on to the next project since this one took me so long! Now, where's my tape measure?
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