Primer is our paint color

This past weekend we started on a couple new projects!
1) organize the mass chaos in the garage
Before:

 After: (Our garage... aka- Ryan's shop) :)

2 & 3) I started tackling the mantle, which you will hopefully be seeing "the final product" this weekend, while Ryan began demoing our "outdoor kitchen." Yes, we HAD an outdoor kitchen... unfortunatly the fella who lived here before us built it right up against the house. Apparently you have to leave an air space for the brick to breathe. Otherwise when the brick gets wet the water will just sit there, and since it was built against the house, it would eventually cause the wood to rot behind it! And we all know what rotted wood looks like... now we don't want to go through that again now do we?
I'm sure I have some before pictures somewhere... but here are the ... I guess you would call the "during pictures"...

haha!

I'm not totally positive, but I think we will finish this demoing this weekend, and Ryan will begin the next project... putting siding on the house (kind of important :) and moving our back door (to be explained in a later post).

Here is a little taste of the mantle and fireplace remodel:

 With the new dry wall there now is was a gap between the wall and the mantle. My awesome husband fixed it by adding the wood you see in the picture below and adding a strip or two to the mantle itself. :) It now fits like a glove!

Now for the fireplace...

We know we want to change the red tile... ick. We don't want a huge time spent on this, so paint will hopefully solve that delima. *Note, Ryan basicely left me on my own for this, so I was going at this blindly... well... except for the googled "how-to remodel a fireplace" articles that I stalked. Here are my steps:

1) Sand using fine grit (150 or higher)

 2) Clean and tape off using painters tape

 3) We are painting over the tile, so of course we had to prime, not once, not twice, but three times... because the decision on Sunday was to paint the tile white...

 Of course after its third coat of paint, Ryan got the great idea of painting it a slate grey instead... and making our mantle white instead. Ahhh... we love extra work. :)

I actually think the new color palate will be fabulous... suggestions on a grey paint color anyone? Right now we are enjoying the color- primer.