My Return & Barn Wood Fireplace Surrounds

 Time has raced by and I'm happy to be back to blogging!  We finished renovating the beach house and spent the summer enjoying the ocean and the beauty of Cape Ann.  

I will post photos of the transformation in the coming weeks. But until then, above is a photo of the Annisquam Lighthouse at sunset that we took on our last night at the beach.  Wasn't the sky amazing? 

Here is a photo of the house with the new roof and all the new windows installed. The roof lines are all rounded and curved, which is difficult to do.  I am so glad we found a master roofer to take that challenge on.  We have done so much to update it - I will give you a tour when I get back up there and take some proper photos.  For now I wanted to share with you a new project I am working on.

I am designing a new fireplace surround for a ski house in Colorado. It is a renovation project of 1970's townhouse with very boxy rooms and almost no architectural detail. The furniture is going to be modern, but I want introduce some rustic design elements. The current fireplace is gas and we will be replacing it with a new gas model. We love the look of the fireplace above. I have been searching for old barn board and corbels. We love the whitewash of the wood. The hearth looks to be stone or copper and is rounded. We decided to start with this as our inspiration.

Here is another shot of the same fireplace surround.  This photo is from the Serena and Lily catalogue.  In fact, their current holiday catalog also has another wonderful shot of this fireplace.  Here you can see a closer view of the hearth.  I love the roughness of the wood and the texture it adds to an otherwise plain room.

I found this fireplace on Pinterest. Sorry for the photo quality, but I included it because the surround has a very similar feeling.

Another example from Pinterest, but this fireplace doesn't have the heavy corbels on either side.  I think it may be better scaled for my project.  I do like the natural, aged color of the barn wood.  Again, you can see how much architectural interest it brings to the room.  Also from a cost perspective, I am able to find relatively inexpensive wood in the barns of New England.  My finish carpenter is so talented and has assured me it can easily be recreated. 

Unfortunately we haven't addressed the placement of the TV.  My plan is to somehow incorporate doors to hide the TV.  Here is an example, but I still haven't quite figured out how to work it into the design.  

When searching for wood for the project I hope to find some interesting doors.  I like these above -  but they are not exactly right. I may have to design them myself out of the barn wood scraps.  Either way, it's an exciting project and I am thrilled to begin the process.

It's wonderful to be back blogging.  I have missed hearing from you all and I do hope you stop by and let me know how you have been.  I've been keeping up with my favorite blogs, and of course, like everyone else, spending too many late nights on Pinterest.  Please feel free to follow me there, I have so many fabulous inspiration folders. You'll also be able to view some of the projects I worked on while I was gone!  

Hope you are enjoying the fall!!
xoxo Gina

(all photos property of Willow Decor, unless specified, and are not to be copied or used without permission - all other photos from Pinterest)

Renovating My Beach House

"Renovating My Beach House" really should be titled "How I Finally Convinced My Husband To Let Go of the Stained Wood Walls". You see men love wood walls. For seven years, my husband and many of our male friends would actually cringe when I told them I dreamed of painting it all white. "No, No they would say, this room looks like a mountain lodge; it reminds me of hunting and camping!" And, I would argue "WE ARE AT THE BEACH!"

Over time I renovated every other space in the house. Lady luck finally smiled on me when our heating bills got too high. "We really should replace the single pane glass windows," my husband reasoned. Of course the original windows were odd sizes and to save money we needed to buy stock sizes. New cut outs in the wall meant new trim mouldings. The original walls were an orangey stain which I couldn't even begin to match, and all of sudden we HAD to paint! So really this post should be titled " The Magical Transformation with Paint" because that is what it truly turned out to be.

The photo above is the house as I bought it seven years ago. It is our living room and dining area taken from the original real estate listing.

Here is living and dining area before we painted.

A few gallons of primer and some Farrow and Ball Paint in Pointing and even I was amazed at the transformation!

Here is the fireplace. No matter what I tried I could not remove the 40 year old soot stains.

Paint hides everything!

The antique dish cupboard used to just blend into the wall.

And now it is a focal point in the room.

I've been playing around with some shells, dishes and antique pewter and here's what I came up with. I love to change the accessories, but for now I really like this monochromatic look. Oh, and the baskets below hold flip flops - it keeps things more organized in the entry area.

Here is the couch area before - I forgot to put the back cushions on the couch in this photo. Notice the different heights of the window and door mouldings. This used to drive me crazy.

And here is the same space painted. The different moulding heights just fade away - see paint can hide many flaws. Also look closely at the ceiling. You can see a hint of blue. The ceilings are painted in Farrow and Ball's Pale Powder and they look amazing. They are darker than they photograph. The pale blue really picks up the color of the ocean. Isn't the view amazing?

The eating area before. When we originally purchased the house, the half wall was actually a full glass window and a a door. We winterized the porch and opened the area up. It really visually enlarges the space.

The after photo shows how cohesive the space looks with it all painted a uniform color.

Here is a close up of the four season porch before.And the amazing after!

Here are close ups of the Willow Furniture I bought off the back of artisan's truck 10 years ago at a flea market. I have owned the weather vane for 20 years. I bought it at a barn sale in North Carolina. Wisteria is now making an exact reproduction. So now I am not sure that mine is actually old or a 20 year old reproduction, but I love it just the same. You can see I keep moving the accessories around.

We still have a lot unpacking and finishing to do on these rooms. I have some roman shades ordered and a really fabulous fireplace screen on the way. We will get to all that when we move up there for summer in June, but I wanted to share with you the progress to date.

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We are so thrilled with how it turned out. My husband turned to me and said "I can't believe this is our house!" A little bit of paint can really transform things- I hope this inspires some of you to paint those wood walls. I'll be posting the outdoor transformations once I finish the gardens, so keep reading!

(all photos Willow Decor)