In my basement I am lucky enough to have a room with a hardwood floor and a fireplace. Unfortunately the crazy scotch-tape wielding previous owners (they’re like eighty, so on one hand I feel bad calling them crazy, on the other hand do you know how many pieces of tape I have had to peel off my walls?) that used to own this house at some point painted the fireplace brick blue. Because nothing says classy like blue brick. In their defense, it probably didn’t look all that good to start with, but it’s going to when I’m done.

Here is the heavily touched up before picture. In reality, there was one light bulb in this room casting its glow on dingy walls, and about 50 linear feet of shelving.

Here’s how the basement fireplace looks without the hideous blue brick. (Yeah, the same brick that everyone said would be “so hard” to plaster over… and my everyone, I mean the Effing contractor who keeps giving me these looks when he goes by projects I’ve started in my own house, like “Oh, you’re going to do it that way?” He even told me he could fix up the wood stairs I’m refinishing with a paint sprayer. I have to laugh at him, because if I lose my sense of humor I’m going to snap and end up paint-spraying him into oblivion.) So I just can’t resist saying Nah-nah, Na Nah-nah. And it will look even better with the frame and mantel.

And a couple coats of Sherwin-Williams “Spanish olive” later, ta-da!

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