The Concrete Cottage: Trimming and the Fireplace

For the last few weeks the trim carpenters have been hard at work. I feel like this is the stage where it starts really feeling like a house. It's also where I begin to see if all the decisions I've been making for the past year were the right ones.

My goal is to have the feel of a farmhouse. I see that as clean, simple lines, and a mix of woods and metals. Something that feels collected over time. Only time will tell though if I get it right. For starters, we've picked a very simple trim and casings, five panel doors, and 2"x 2" wood spindles for the banister.

Senoia Farmhouse via Houzz.com

We gave the carpenter the picture above as an example of the door and window casing/trim we wanted. And below is what he made. Can't wait to see it caulked and painted.

This is our master closet. It's hard to take a good photo in this small space, but this area will house our washer and dryer, with room for a trash can and storage of soap, etc.

The fireplace is something I'm really excited about, but has been a bit of a challenge. We found a few fireplaces that we're combining to create what we want.

Muskoka Living

We will have doors covering an opening for the television, similar to the pic above. I'm sure they will be open most of the time, but I like having the option of hiding the TV if we want.

The Lettered Cottage

The rest of the fireplace will be similar to this one. A beam for a mantel, brick around the actual fireplace and painted wood. We do like the mix of blue, white and wood in this photo, but haven't decided if we'll do that, or paint everything but the beam white.

Speaking of the beam. We were very lucky to obtain one from a friends family barn in Wisconsin. We chose from this pile of gorgeous wood that's all over 100 years old. That shorter one (which is actually over 12 foot long) on the left is the one we picked.

This one here, with the grass growing out of it.

When we built our current house, we had a project that required two large corbels. After the corbels were delivered, we went in a different direction, and they've been sitting in our garage for the past six years. Fast forward to last week, and they're being used to help hold up this heavy beam.

They did require some modification though. They are a cove style corbel like this. Which means they're intended to sit at an angle, and that doesn't work for our fireplace. The trim carpenter cut off the top portion so the beam could sit on top and the back would sit on the wall.

It's a bit hard to see from straight on, but since the back is now sitting flat on the wall, it makes the bottom portion jut out into the room.

You can see what I'm talking about better from the side. I was working out of state last week when my husband sent these pictures to me. I tried to like them, I really did.

I even took the time to edit the photo. I thought maybe it was the difference in wood tones that was throwing me off. Didn't really help.

When I got home on Friday, I just couldn't pretend anymore. I hated the corbels jutting out at the bottom. It wasn't as simple as unbolting them and cutting them off though. They'd used construction adhesive to attach them to the wall. Removing them would tear the entire wall off, sheet rock and all. The carpenter was willing to do that, but the hubby decided to try something different. A chainsaw.

It took some sanding and some wood filler, but it finally started taking a shape I could live with over the weekend.

This is how it looked as of last night. The shiplap or planks will continue up the wall all the way to the ceiling. And will eventually look something like this.