Sunday, February 7, 2010

Warming up the fireplace...




We have a really great fireplace in our contemporary family room. We haven't done much with it other than add a padded bumper to the very sharp corner at the bottom of the hearth (black duct tape blends nicely with the dark green marble). I actually love the look of the natural stone, and I didn't want to cover it up with something big like a mirror or a picture.




I found these sweet metal owls at the Goodwill. My guess is that they are from the 70's, but I could be off by a decade or so. They were the right size, and just perfect for the natural theme I have going in that room. The only problem was that their coloring was just about the same as the fireplace. Camouflage is a great thing for owls in nature, but not so much for owls in home decor.



I hit them with some copper spray paint, and they really gleamed. Even though they reminded me of the cool mechanical owl from "Clash of the Titans," I decided the look was a bit too garish for that space.




So I went over them with a bit of moss green craft paint to give them a verdigris look. The copper accents still stood out, but in a much more subtle way.




I hung the owls up on the stone with 3M Command picture hangers. They are great in situations where you really don't want to drill. I decided I wanted a small "mantle" to hold tea lights and/or little vases of fresh flowers (depending on the season). I spray painted a shelf my awesome engineer dad built for me to hang in my first apartment. It was a light oaky color, but that didn't really work on the dark stone. Black was just perfect, however. It is also hung with numerous large Command strips. I even bought a funky ceramic tea light holder at IKEA last week, but it was involved in an unfortunate Nerf football accident before I could get pictures. It was too big anyway, so I just put a few tea lights in ball jars from the basement. I also hung a sparkly crystal to spread light around (and ward off future Nerf ball attacks).



You may have heard...we got whalloped with a record-breaking blizzard. We got close to 30" in the Baltimore suburbs, which is A LOT for this part of the country. I decided that I would do all of the shoveling in the interest of giving my hubby a break and also getting a good workout. What was I thinking??? It took me 4 hours to shovel out the driveway, front walk, back walk, and sidewalk. Towards the end, my wrist started to ache, but I just pushed on through. I think I sprained it, because it really hurts to do little things like fold laundry. So for the rest of the weekend, I think I am just going to curl up in my easy chair and enjoy my newly decorated fireplace!


7 comments:

Tabitha said...

30" wow we were lucky here in the desert to get a whopping almost 3 lol...I love the owls very cool looking on that fireplace!

peter said...

WOW Are you sure you are not in Buffalo????? Yikes

cupcake studio said...

Ooh, lovin' your owls!

And, bless your heart for shoveling...goodness, we just got about 12 inches...can't imagine what 30 inches looks like, ugh!

Have a great week!

...t. said...

Have I mentioned that knowing you makes me want to be better in every way?

Anonymous said...

SO jealous of your owls! I would have snatched those up in a second! I love repainting thrifted things like that. Great find!

Anonymous said...
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Unknown said...

Hey Carla, I'm so sorry the Ikea tealight holder got destroyed. Nerf balls aren't supposed to knock things over. Thanks for the photo of you buried in snow. It's hard to imagine. Hey, you're Southerners!