Checking in....

Thought it was time for a little update on the projects we're working on at Casa LeBaron.  

In living room news, our fireplace is almost finished!  The new tile has been grouted (no pictures yet) and all we have left to do is seal the grout and install the new fireplace doors.  Then I have to figure out how I want to style the mantel- I usually just throw a bunch of frames and things up there but am not sure if that's the way I want to go right now... 

Here's how it's looking (or, here's how it was looking before we grouted the tile):

Below is a close up of how we fixed our cabinet doors.  Originally they were oak with horrible brass hardware.  The panels on each door front was cracked and they were U-G-L-Y.  So we popped out the panels, painted the frames, and used my handy dandy glue gun to inset new panels.  The new panels were made from one sheet of radiator screening that we cut to size and sprayed with oil-rubbed bronze spray paint.  We added new handles and sprayed the old hinges with the paint as well (I need to find a paint pen or something that matches to cover up those brass screws).  You can see a little bit of what's in the cabinet from close up (liquor on one side, CDs and DVDs on the other) but from far away you really can't see much.  Love it!

And a close up of the tile we chose- it's a mix of glass and stone.  We have a slate hearth which we thought would blend but now, of course, it looks totally dated compared to our shiny new tiles.  Eventually we might tile over the hearth too with larger tiles but for now we're going to give it a good scrubbing and apply a sealer and hope that it adds a little shine to the hearth.  

This weekend we'll get it all put back together and I'll share some final photos!  It's really made such a huge difference to our living room- brightens up the whole space and finally the last of the dreaded yellowy oak in our house is GONE!
Our next project?  Mr. "Can't Be Without Something to Do" emailed me from work yesterday to tell me that this will be arriving at our house in the next few days - in boxes, of course, all ready to be assembled:

So we have a few small trees to cut down in the backyard and need to level off a space for it.  I told Paul I thought it looked kind of big and he said "it's only the same dimensions as our living room- it's not too big."  I'm sure LP and future baby will love it though!