Fireplace

From Page 3 fireplace, but Morgan Spenla, founder of craft-kit company Crafter, came up with a brilliant way to fake it: the faux stacked facade.

Spenla chose not to fill her firebox with logs, she says, because “we didn’t want bugs or critters creating a home in a warm space full of wood.” Instead, she painted a thin piece of plywood with leftover chalkboard paint and glued wooden rounds of varying thickness.

She says her fireplace had a channel inside that kept her board upright, but there are countless ways to get the board to stay vertical depending on your fireplace’s design. She used a nail gun from the backside to secure the glued rounds, because they kept sliding down.

When complete, it had the look of a firebox filled with logs, but it still had space to store items. Little pieces such as holiday decorations or even a safe would work well. A few woven baskets filled with throw blankets to create warmth and coziness completed the makeover.

3. Re-tile with style

Re-tiling your firebox is an immediate way to enliven and update the look of your fireplace. Rachel Lovell, a dried flower artist in Bristol, England, chronicled the process on her Instagram. She had a professional remove the gas fireplace, then re-tiled the firebox on her own. Through YouTube, she learned to tile in a herringbone pattern, using paper to mock up her space beforehand to ensure her cuts were exact. The result was a fresh and modern firebox, perfectly suited to her style.

4. Stage a serene scene

Pillar-candle-filled fireboxes are popular, but Kymberly Glazer, director of marketing and sales for the Decorative Plumbing and Hardware Association, had a fresh idea for adding an element of drama, dimension and height. She found a maker on Etsy who could create the custom candle risers she had in mind – and for less money than the mass-produced items she found.

Glazer says she and her husband renovated their first floor when they bought their place, but purposefully kept the nonworking fireplace as a focal point. She says it doesn’t make economic sense to install a gas insert in their New Orleans climate, but she loves the fireplace nonetheless.

5. Create a fairy-light fantasy

Hattie Kolp, an interior design content creator in New York City, used fairy lights, or small string lights, in her firebox to achieve the ambiance of a roaring fire. “My apartment is from 1890, and my [gas] fireplaces have these really gorgeous original tile and iron inserts,” she says. Though the fireplaces no longer work, Kolp wanted to emulate the coziness they once provided and highlight their original features, such as the faux logs. Her solution was to wrap a “very long” strand of string lights around the logs and up to the top of the firebox to create the look of licking flames. To achieve some height with the strand, “I wrapped them around a hook I stuck up inside the chimney,” she says.

6. Add a shelving unit

A fireplace makeover should take its cues from the room and from your functional needs.

Kelly-Jeanne Lee, an urban homesteader in Atlanta, nailed this concept in her child’s bedroom by installing a perfectly sized shelving unit into the unused fireplace. “Adding this bookcase felt like the best use of the space,” she wrote in an Instagram post, “and then filling it was a joy.”

7. Add mirrors

Mirrors can have a big effect on a room, especially in a small space. Young used customcut mirrors to line his firebox, but stick-on mirror tiles are an easy DIY option, too. He says mirrors not only reflect light but also reflect the next room in open-concept designs. They add interest and make it seem as if there’s something beyond the fireplace niche.

You can style with mirrors when something is in the fireplace, too. Young chose natural wood, but statement pieces such as the stone slab or oversize vase that Emma Lee of London photographed would also complement a mirror-lined firebox.

“Just have fun with it,” Young says. He has long loved fireplaces and mantels; he and his husband bought a 1730s home that was once called Hearth House because of the large number of fireplaces, and his forthcoming book features nine of them. “They just speak to me,” he says, “and I don’t care if they’re functioning or not functioning, because I’ll find a way to make them interesting.”

From Page 5 problems. One thing both sides agree on is homeownership is the key to a strong middle class. Fifty-two percent of all Americans older than 55 have no pension plan, 401(k) or IRA. This fact is horrible for the “haves and the have nots” because advancements in health care have all these folks living to an average of 89 years old. The elderly retired “haves” will be taxed to pay for the elderly retired “have nots” and the “have nots” will suffer living on Social Security and government assistance unless they are lucky enough to own a home free and clear, or lucky enough to have financially successful adult children to support them.

The FHA home loan program is not welfare. As a matter of fact, it’s the opposite of a handout; it’s a hand up.

The FHA loan program is a federally owned mortgage insurance company that has made huge profits over the past few years and is sitting on four times the amount of capital reserves required by the statute, because they have been overcharging low- to middle-income families with expensive mortgage insurance premiums for years. Every private mortgage insurance company in America moved to risk-based pricing 10 to 15 years ago and yet the government program that many of my firsttime homebuyers desperately need because they don’t quite qualify for the conventional loan options via Freddie and Fannie is still charging one price for all at a much higher price.

It’s almost unconscionable that Congress, politicians and HUD all talk about homelessness, poverty and housing affordability while they do nothing about this government ripoff happening to the people who need an FHA loan for the long-term financial security that homeownership provides.

The FHA loan program is a non-issue in areas like Santa Barbara, San Francisco, Newport Beach and Silicon Valley, where all the big political donors live, but in places like Solano County, FHA is a way for people who work hard to climb up into the middle class and avoid retiring in poverty with a home free and clear when they turn 70.

Jim Porter, NMLS No. 276412, is the branch manager of Solano Mortgage, NMLS No. 1515497, a division of American Pacific Mortgage Corporation, NMLS No. 1850, licensed in California by the Department of Financial Protection and Innovation under the CRMLA / Equal Housing Opportunity. Jim can be reached at 707-449-4777.