Our Victorian Fireplace Makeover….

Today, you’re going to see my favourite makeover so far in our new house – our original Victorian Fireplace.

When we moved house at the end of February, I was off work unwell and awaiting an operation so despite having the biggest plans for our new house, I could only manage the smaller jobs which I found so frustrating as you can imagine. 

The fireplace was my first project and I thoroughly enjoyed taking my time, making it look exactly as I wanted it to look while my poor partner was tasked with the bigger jobs in the room like getting rid of the giant emerald green strip above the picture rail. 😁

When we first viewed the house, there was a big gas fire pushed up against this one so we had no idea what was behind it – can you imagine how excited I got when I saw this little beauty. I took this photo when we popped round to take some measurements just before we moved in and I knew that it was going to be my favourite feature in the house from that moment…

This one was taken the day after we moved in and as much as I still loved the fireplace itself, I knew that I wanted to change the surround ASAP. It was an off white/cream/yellow kind of colour and the wall behind it was an odd magnolia colour which seemed to me to clash.

As well as that, the floral mirror above it wasn’t my style at all and I wasn’t a fan of the shiny gold wall lights that were up (don’t even get me started on how long it took me to find the switch for the wall lights). 

First up, we had a chimney sweep come and look at the fireplace to check it was all safe and give it a good old clean – we don’t plan on using it as an open fire but wanted to make sure it was OK which it was thankfully.

Choosing the colour for the surround consisted of me stood in B&Q for about half an hour before running out of energy and just choosing a colour because I thought the name sounded pretty. 😁 We chose Farrow and Ball in the shade ‘Dimity’ but I asked the paint mixing counter man to match it for me which cost a fraction of the price. 

The walls were an easier choice as all the walls in the room other than the fireplace wall were already painted a colour that we just wanted to colour match for the fireplace wall and a random green strip that had been painted above the picture rail. 

The small sample of colour that we could get from the walls wasn’t large enough to get a colour match from so we wandered around with the help of the paint match man and after comparing our miniscule paint chip to every paint swatch in the shop, we found it was almost identical to another Farrow and Ball shade called ‘Dead Salmon’ which is a horrible name for a paint, isn’t it? 

We got a pot colour matched to the Dead Salmon shade and couldn’t believe how close a match it was when we tried it on the walls so my lovely partner started to paint the fireplace wall and get rid of that green stripe and I was so pleased with the results. We do plan to give the rest of the walls a refresh at some point but it’s not a priority just yet. 

Once the walls were done, it was my turn to start on the fireplace which was super quick to do and the difference that a couple of coats of paint made was huge! 

We found some gorgeous black wall lights on Facebook Marketplace so we took the shiny gold lights down and replaced them with our new ones. Once they were down we sold them (and the main light fitting that matched them) on Marketplace so our lights ended up costing us £5. 😁

I painted the wooden surround on the base to match the fire surround and added a mirror from Dunelm and that was me done. 

I love love love it! 

It’s my favourite room in the house although we definitely still have work to do – we want to restore this original cupboard as there are some other drawer fronts and bits to go with this in the garage and we also have a plan at some point in the future to lift the carpet and bring the original floorboards back to life. 

It’s my favourite place to sit in the house – so much so, that we’ve just added in an old fashioned wing back chair in the corner so I can sit in there and just chill sometimes. 

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