Fireplace Makeover

We have lived in our home for nearly two years and haven't done a single thing to it yet except put a few nail holes in the walls. As mentioned in previous posts, we set a goal when we first moved in to get a food storage put together before we started spending any money on fixing up the place, which is why things have been left untouched. It took a lot of work, but now that our food & water storage is in place, we're finally ready to start fixing things up around here and I couldn't be more excited.

So for our first project, we decided to add a built-in bookshelf to this very awkward space around our fireplace, which was clearly designed by a man (no offense to you men out there)...but seriously, no woman would design such a thing.

We hired my brother Zack to build this wall unit for us and he did such a great job! This is a picture of Mike working on the caulking, which we did by ourselves.

We also painted it ourselves and this is the final look. We still need to put knobs and hinges on the cupboard doors and eventually upgrade our TV to a flatscreen, but other than that, this small area of our home is finished!

I stuffed the shelves with accessories I've had packed away in boxes like old books, old glass bottles, a big barbed wire ball that I won at a family reunion, baskets, an old cow on wheels, an old clock, and then went over to HomeGoods and found a few other random objects to add to it. It was such a fun project and I look forward to the next one.