My ‘Faux’erplace BIG Reveal

If I could bring to you my house, and if I would let my husband spend boatloads of moolah on the timpani he’s always dreamed of owning, I’d be ordering a drum roll right now!

I am so excited to share with you the big reveal! I know I had given you a teaser of my big project with my Painted Window Sign blog post and today is the day I share with you our faux fireplace and how we created it!

One of my Vegas besties resurfaced her fireplace, beautifully I must add! She was going to ditch the builder’s formed concrete surround and I stole… er, got it from her for only $25 bucks!

It was so heavy and I think I may have pulled something while moving it one day, but it was a shame to put it to waste. My Living Room was such a bare space that lacked a focal point and it needed an element that added warmth and a welcoming touch since this was the first room you saw when you came into our Vegas home. I knew I could repurpose this old concrete frame into a Faux Fireplace that would be a show stopper.

I wanted everything about my fireplace to look fake, so I built a base with a pallet wood and scraps. I cut pieces of scrap wood we had and left all the blemishes to show for a weathered look.

Don’t show this to any master carpenters – they would die!

DIY Faux Fireplace Tutorial | Jen @ Noting Grace shares how she transformed her living room into a cozy reading spot with a faux fireplace.

This is how I mounted the formed concrete to the wall. The concrete frame is rather heavy, so I’m confident it won’t move, but I first placed the 2X4 into the studs, and screwed another on top to anchor the surround. Here is a view from the top.

I love how it looks like it’s floating there! It’s magic, y’all!

We trimmed the sides with baseboard molding that I painted, and painted, and painted to get it to match the concrete.

I just used craft paint I had on hand and mixed it until I found the right match.

I pinned this fireplace from Pinterest as part of my inspiration. I love what Janet from The Decorating Diaries, did with book pages to line her gorgeous fireplace! I was instantly inspired!

Bad blogger moment: I forgot to take pics for a tute on this, but I’ll tell you what I did.

I got a HUMONGO piece of cardboard from a big box store that they were just pitching. The sales guy looked at me as if I had two heads, but if he only knew what I was going to create with this! I brought it home and lined it with all types of different paper using a glue stick. Sheet music, old dictionary pages, book pages, scrapbooking paper, etc.

I used an old newspaper from 1953 that lined the soldier’s trunk as a centerpiece to my book page backdrop. It’s one of my favorite parts of this piece.

Our local grocery store had birchwood logs on clearance for a few bucks. I placed them in an old WWII solder’s trunk I found at an estate sale.

I added Christmas lights underneath the logs for that fireplace glow. The lights heat up the birch wood enough to give that nice smell.

For the mantel, I hemmed and hawed about what to do and when back to my scrap pile. I needed it to be narrow, but long.

I found 2 fencing timbers that we had left over from shed project we built. I sanded them down and glazed them a nice dark brown and distressed them to look like pieces of driftwood.