Next?!!

We've been chugging along on the living room remodel.  The plasterers came yesterday and the walls look great!  Hubby has been threatened to within an inch of his life if he puts a scratch or dent in our new walls!!

Now that we've completed that fun task, it's time to move onto fixing some of the problems.

Problem # 1

When we took the wall down between the two rooms, it left a space in the floor on either side where we'll have to fill in with wood, since we'll be pulling up those lovely carpets and restoring the hardwood underneath.

We bought the wood last night.  It's certainly not going to look like there was never anything there, but we'll piece it in as well as we can, then sand it with the rest of the floor and put lots of polyurethane on it.

Problem # 2

Same thing with the ceiling.   There's a beam where the wall used to be.   We're planning on covering it up with a nice piece of wood and some molding.

Problem # 3

The chimney sticks out into the room.  We originally thought we'd be able to leave the chimney exposed and it would give some character to the room.  And then we took down the wall around it, and found that a lovely gray metal heating duct ran up the length of it.

So our second plan was to find some paneling that looks like bricks and put that up around it.  Until we went to the store and saw the paneling and.......well........it looks like paneling!  We then started looking into alternatives.   Believe it or not, there is wallpaper that looks like brick.  But again...well, you know.

And then I found "thin brick".   It comes on a mesh sheet:

It's real brick - about 1/4 of the thickness of a real brick.  You paste it onto the wall and then put grout in the cracks, so it looks like a real brick wall.  However,  it's going to cost about $650 to do that small area.   

So problem # 4 is that neither Hubby nor I will be satisfied with cheap looking paneling or wallpaper.   Looks like we'll be spending a fortune on faux bricks.