Making the house our home - family room

I know, I know- I've lived in Florida for roughly three weeks and haven't let any of you in on all our decorating plans. That's because decorating is really time consuming. I actually jumped into home-making the day after we arrived. Remember this family room photo from this post?

Family Room

I'm not sure why we never bothered to take more or even a better photo. We actually hated the fireplace surround when we first looked at the house.  The not-sage green paint paired with the yellow shelving takes away from the natural stone and makes the whole wall look sickly.  Plus, the shelves break the wall up making the room look narrower than it actually is.Ben wasn't even out of his pajamas yet when I encouraged some demolition on our first morning in the house.

See how much bigger (and, um, healthier) the fireplace looks by just removing one little shelf?

Next, this number had to come out:

Considering every room in the house (and a few outside spaces too) is wired for sound, I assume this held some kind of receiver or tuner.  I am not fluent in techie-speak, but that's what I'm going with. I also saw no reason to let Ben have all the demo fun.

Next time, I might comb my hair before documenting my prowess over wood and power tools.

It took us maybe a day to take out all the shelves. Did I mention they were cedar?  Yeah. At some point somebody decided to cover beautiful cedar beams with paint. Not yellow paint, mind you.  That came later. Using this:

We have managed to uncover green paint, mauve paint, primer,  and something blue that is neither paint nor identifiable. We've stripped and scraped away paint, spackle, primer, and sadly, some wood. Ben has also removed dozens of nails. Photos have a way of making things seem less horendous than they are but here's a corner shot of one of the uprights:

Do you see how thick that paint is?
So after three weeks this is all we have to show for our efforts:

I feel like we need one of those construction signs that says "Please Excuse Our Mess."  Once we get that wood sanded and oiled, though, I just know the fireplace will look great.  I almost feel like it is breathing a thank you every time we scrape off another layer of paint. My advice: NEVER PAINT BEAUTIFUL WOOD. EVER.