Not All Wood Should Be Painted

There is some woodworking and plastering going on in our master bedroom.  We had a little trouble with one of the walls, more specifically, the wall above the fireplace.  

This picture is before the wall was taken down, hence a year old.  I couldn't find a better picture of the fireplace though which is the whole point of this post...gah!  Anyway, the wall above the fireplace apparently had something called lime rot?  Nope, never heard of it either.  So the plaster had to be taken down to the brick and the brick had to be treated with something.  It's always 1 step forward 2 steps back with this house!

In the meantime the fireplace mantle had to be removed.  It was pretty typical of a mantle in an over hundred year old home...painted over a million times with goopy paint.  We decided to go ahead and have it stripped and start fresh.  Then we got a call from the shop that does the stripping.  Apparently under countless coats of paint the wood was bird's eye maple which is a very expensive and beautiful wood.  In the nicest way possible they basically told us (and we agreed) that it would be a crime to paint over it.  So instead we had them just poly it and call it a day.  When my husband went to pick it up he said there were whispers everywhere as all the staff came out to greet my husband and display the work they were so proud of.  They even put it on their website.  Cute.

I wish I had a closeup of the before because it had been painted so many times that you really couldn't see all the detail.  I can't wait to see it back up in the room!