A before and after of the finished product.
Buried in the depths of the pandemic, I was living by myself and looking for things to do. When I moved into my townhouse in 2017, the
previous owners had left much of in the state it was built in. It looked perfectly acceptable, but it was boring. One of the first major
projects I decided to do myself was update the chimney breast to resemble and actual chimney. My unit has a ventless natural gas fireplace
and a cutout for a chimney breast above it. Even though it's technically too high, it was the perfect place to mount a 50-55 inch TV just
because of the way the room lays out. We typically sit ~20 feet away from the TV so the height is not an issue, but our living room is so
much more liveable because of the way we've set it up.
Here are a few pictures:
This is the before picture. Very plain but functional. In 2017, I added the TV mount, and by some miracle,
I bolted into both studs perfectly. Other than that, this is how the chimney breast looked for the first 20+ years the house
existed. I slightly modified the TV mount to bump out the TV a bit. This is to give it clearance for the brick that would
be behind it. I tore out the existing trim on the chimney and installed some smurf tube for whatever wiring needed to get to/from the TV
and across the fireplace. This was the most chaotic part. It was the first and only time I've ever done any masonry. I was working quickly worried
about how fast my mortar would dry. Instead the real problem was that the bricks would fall of the wall because I was going too fast.
I eventually figured out the right cadence. Work in progress - now I have the hang of it. The thin brick is all set and now the grout remains. You can see I slightly lost my line as I got near the top. The grout was tough for a different reason. It gets everywhere if you don't know what you're doing, and there are so
many tiny gaps to fill. To this day, I still find spots I wish I'd done more cleanly. Finally the chimney breast resembles its final form. You can see the space I left for the TV. The TV is back on the mount. I originally also wanted to do built-ins on the sides, but I went the lazy route and bought
some Ikea furniture that leaves about 3" on each side. I still want to go back and fix that. But we've also got bigger plans for
the entire entertainment center. The finished product. I later modified the cabinets to fit the bookshelf speakers. It's a cardinal sin by audiophile
standards but it created so much more space in fron of the cabinets. Also my new white Revel bookshelf speakers look and sound so much
better than the black klipsch bookshelfs you see here. And a nighttime shot... I added some led strips on the shelves to offer some mood lighting for late night movie or sports
watching.
"If you're not doing what you love, you're just wasting your time" - Billy Joel
