Fireplace February, Part II

About five years ago, Ben and I thought it might be fun to makeover our ugly fireplace. It took six weeks and ended up being more like the opposite of fun, but after it was over I thought it was totally worth it. Ben disagrees. His memory is a little better than mine.

To celebrate the 5-year-reunion of that fireplace makeover, I thought it might be fun to do it again. Ben was totally opposed. But I talked him into it, and this time it only took a few days, spread out over a couple weeks. We didn’t even make it to February.

And look! It's better, right?

We started with floor-to-ceiling red brick, with a nice hole cut out for the mantel. I'm sure it's totally normal. What better way to attach your mantel than cutting into your brick wall?

The Internet told us we could use something called wood luan, and that we could just glue it to the bricks with PL Premium. So we did.

We bought a mantel leg and skirt kit from Home Depot. This was the only expensive part of the project. It cost $139. Maybe we could have built the pieces ourselves, but Ben wasn't 100% on board yet and I couldn't have done it without him. So then I caulked and primed it.

And then paint. I considered stopping here. Maybe I should have, but it’s too late now so don’t tell me if I made a huge mistake. 

Then I painted the bricks white.

And then added some moulding. Again, with glue. Maybe I went a little overboard with the tape. Big deal.

Then I caulked and painted the moulding, and now I love it! And the best part of all is that Ben loves it, too. Well...likes it, at least.

Unpredictable Is His Middle Name

I’m head-over-heels in love with this boy, but sometimes I just wish he were even 1% similar to his siblings. A couple weeks ago he got a double ear infection, only instead of getting a fever or crying about it, he just weaned himself. I was so confused.

Luckily I did a poor job of clipping his fingernails that week, so he ended up with a bunch of tiny red scabs where he had been scratching his right ear. That was my one and only clue to take him to the doctor.

I pumped for about a week before my milk was gone, and today I am throwing away all of my nursing bras. If two months’ worth of formula didn’t cost $59,823,375, I would be singing HALLELUJAH at the top of my lungs. But since it does, I’m just singing in my normal voice.