Revamping Boobear's Fireplace

First off, what a lucky little poop to have her own fireplace.  Not that she's going to get to use it anytime soon.  I may have my faults, but I'm a better mom than that!  So here's what her fireplace looked like.

Bleh!  Hot mess.  I was just going to paint over it and hoped that it would look better.  My husband decided to try to sand it a bit to make the paint go on a bit smoother.  That's when this happened.

Huh?  What's this?  Someone painted black paint over slate.  Um ok.  I prefer just the slate.  I don't see a need to paint black slate black, do you?  Different strokes I guess?  So we just sealed it.  The inside brick still looked like crap so we painted it with heat resistant paint.

Now I just have to paint this screen I bought.

It has an aged gold finish which doesn't look bad in pictures, but looks a bit dirty to me in real life.  I'm going to brighten it up with some gold spray paint and hope for the best.

I have to say that this fireplace has been on my list of things to do for months so I'm pretty happy about the progress.  Now, if I can just get a minute to spray paint the screen...

Starting (But Probably Not Finishing-Heh) The Girls' Hallway

Well this week was hell.  My husband got the stomach flu and lovingly passed it on to moi.  Awesome.  I haven't had the flu since I was a teen.  Wow, I've missed that feeling of being beaten to a pulp...not!  Can I get a collective F-You Flu!!??  Ok.  Done with that.  Moving on.

I've been looking for a runner for the kids' hallway for about a million years.  The hallway is 21 feet long which posed an issue.  I found some cute possibilities, but they always fell a bit short.  Get it?  A bit short?  Oh how I amuse myself and only myself.  I had found a great possibility from a rug seller on ebay, rug emporium.  Great rugs, great auction prices.  Wrong colors though.  I kind of envisioned something bright and cheerful which apparently can be yours for thousands of dollars.  No thanks.  Then I got the Flor catalogue in the mail.  For anyone who hasn't been barraged with their catalogue, they sell carpet floor tiles.  I love the concept of them.  You can easily replace one if one gets ruined, they're easy to place and don't mess up your existing floors.  They aren't the cheapest solution.  I'm  speaking to you DIYers out there who can MacGyver just about anything...Linda.  Some of us aren't as gifted.  Anyway, as I was looking in the catalogue I saw this.

image via Flor catalogue

I was looking at the colors on the left and then it hit me.  What if I made a runner to look just like what is pictured.  One carpet tile of each color.  

So here's how it turned out.

I have to say that the actual colors are a bit more attractive in the catalogue, but it scratches my itch.  It's fun and most importantly it's durable.  This puppy's not going anywhere for a while.  Now I just want to add some of boobear's art, some pictures and some inspirational art and their hallway will be done.