Banishing the Brick!

I posted before Halloween about the playroom fireplace.  It was plain brick and boring and it's been on the to do list for awhile now.  I had a dilema though.  The hubs wanted to pain it white and I wanted to paint it a darker shade of the wall color (Chromium by Valspar)

Here is the before:

It was dirty and I googled ways to clean the brick just to make sure there wasn't anything too crazy that I was supposed to do.  Nope.  Some scrubbing bubbles, a brush, and a bucket of water.  I scrubbed it pretty good and the changed the dirty water frequently but I didn't notice a huge difference.  However, I'm sure my paint stuck better to a clean surface.
I'm a huge fan of priming.  I prime everything.  It takes my project longer to be completed, but I think it's a step that is totally worth while.  Plus priming always gives me an idea of what the item would look like white.

Here it is primed.  It was this step that I knew I was not going to like the white.  

The hubs and I compromised on the wall color.  I really thought I was going to like the dark but if it looked awful, I would have had to eat that argument and I didn't feel like doing that.   I also thought the wall color would be "fine".  Why don't they ever see our vision?  SO wall color it was.  I went and got it's own quart ($13) to make sure I didn't run out.

It honestly was the same color and same finish (I touched up the walls!), but looked really baby blue (two coats).  I did not like it but it took me a couple of days to tell Chad.  Who also didn't like it!  Woot!  Back to Lowes.  I found a darker grey in the same family and had them try to match.  They couldn't, but I didn't need anything specific, just a darker tint to that color.  So needless to say the final product does not have a name.  I was worried about it screaming "I'm a fireplace" but it is what it is.  Two coats later, I love it and maybe one day I'll style it.

 I also painted the "hearth" black oil based high heat resistant black matte.

I hope that when brick fireplaces come back, I'm not in this house, because that is going to be impossible to get back!

Run Happy

This weekend my BFF was in town.  It was a quick Halloween visit, but honestly they are all too short.  She is a big runner and needs someplace to hang all her medals.  Usually she likes to "steal" random projects from around my house, but this time we did something just for her.

A wooden plaque from Michaels ($10ish) that the boys painted and some cup hooks ($3ish) from Lowes.

Then I printed out "Run Happy" which is from a quote she likes..traced it on to the board and colored it in with permanent marker.  Added the cup hooks and hanging hardware to the back.  All done!

Easy peasy organizing project!  What's the easiest project you've ever done?