I dreamed up this project a little under a year ago when we moved into our new space. This giant blank wall needed a statement piece and since our renters requested the pipe shelf entertainment center that Josh built stay with the old house, we didn’t have anything. Back then, there was really only one tutorial on how to do something like this, but dang it was a good one. Search for the “Whitney Hansen how to build a fireplace in one weekend” series on YouTube. But it’s a big project and a lot to think through. Over our nearly 7 years of marriage, I’ve learned that the more tutorials I send Josh, the more confident he is to start a project; but there really was only that one good tutorial for a long time. Thankfully for some reason, in the last few months, it seems like EVERYONE has been building out electric fireplaces, and I was able to send him three bloggers posts detailing their builds. Chris Loves Julia, Nesting with Grace, and The Blooming Nest. All three have excellent detailed posts about how to do this, so I’m not really going into a detailed “how to” here on this blog, just sharing our journey. Six months ago Josh took several of my chicken scratch drawings into sketch up, confirmed it was something we could pull off, and then we waited to save up for this project and finish a few others. But… then Jett learned how to (and learned that he LOVED to) turn the volume all the way down and the TV off several dozen times a day; because he realized he could reach the buttons and that sort of sped up our timeline. So, our thanksgiving break was spent with bit of time at Home Depot and a lot of time in the garage, but alas, it’s done. I love it even more than I thought I would.
In order to allow for a cable box (something we don’t plan on having, but doesn’t hurt to prepare for) or an XBOX1X (which the handy builder is getting for Christmas) we added an open box behind the tv that has power and cable run to it. It wouldn’t work well for something that you need access to frequently like a dvd player, but works great for what we have planned. Also, the baseboards were put back, I’m just impatient when it comes to taking pictures.
This is the fireplace that we ordered on Amazon, it’s really the expensive part of the whole project. The lumber, shiplap, lattice trim, and wood for the mantle is all from home depot. The whole project including the $600 fireplace came out to just around $1,000. It helped that we had all the tools we needed: Finish nail gun and air compressor, miter saw, table saw, etc.
xoxo,
Adora
Edit: Added pictures of the inset Box for commenter, Michael. Electrical is pigtailed off of an outlet below, hidden behind the fireplace structure the cable line is continued from below as well.
P.S. If you do end up building something like this, I would love to see it! Please tag me on Instagram: @adoramae
P.P.S. About 18 months later and this post is the most popular one on my blog by far and since we’re about to move out of this house, I wanted to post some updated photos. (Below) You can see it’s held up beautifully except for some paint touch up needed at the bottom where my kids are constantly scratching at and “vrooming” hot wheels cars across it. We added floating shelves on either side that are just 2×10 pine boards stained to match the mantel and farmhouse style brackets from Home Depot. A big comfortable chair on one side and ever affordable IKEA LÄTT kids table that we also stained and chalkboard painted to match. I’ve loved having this fireplace on everyday and I’ve LOVED seeing so many of the fireplaces y’all have built inspired by this one. Thank you for stopping by!
