Hearth Room Mini-Makeover, Part 1

The original post has been revised with new, brighter photos.  Thanks to Centsational Girl for the photo tips!

We have this rather ridiculous area of our house called referred to as a hearth room.  It's too small to be a family room and too big to ignore.  And it has its own fireplace (duh, it's a hearth room) which means more $$$ in insurance premiums.  But it does make for a nice place to drink coffee, read a book and listen to music.

This is the part where I put my hands over my face and show the Before:

This is called CLUTTER.  Over the years, we just stuck stuff on the mantel.  More about function than aesthetic.  Except the speakers, which we haven't used in ages.  That's about laziness.

Mr. Tallgrass has been saying that he wanted to retire the painting over the fireplace in the hearth room.  He also has been saying he's not thrilled with the color of the walls in the kitchen/breakfast/hearth area, so yippee, I get to paint!  To save a little money, I just mixed some of the Sherwin William's Galliant Gold from the living room update debacle with some leftover SW White Raisin from the foyer.  Mr. Tallgrass is thrilled that I didn't spend any money to repaint.  :)

We found this very cool resin window/medallion thing at an antique market a couple of weeks ago.

And my new shiny red mantel accessories?  I had a completed punch card from Savers for 30% off my entire purchase, so I went shopping!

You should have seen the dubious look of the cashier when I checked out.

But I had only four and I wanted five to make them odd numbered.  And I wanted the fifth object to be slender, like the pitcher.  And I wanted to get the project finished NOW.  So I started scouting the house and came up with this.

Yup, a half finished bottle of really sweet red wine from a party last weekend.  Time to break out the spray paint!

Everyone knows the decorating power of grouping of object of different shapes but keeping them the SAME COLOR.  So my motley collection got lots and lots of thin coats of glossy Krylon Georgia Clay spray paint.  Basically, I'd run to the garage, give the first object a quick spray, run inside for the next piece and when I was finished with the last one, the first vase was ready for another coat.

Except the poor wine bottle.  It looked like I was just filling an old wine bottle with Clamato.  So I rummaged in the basement to find a possible replacement vase or bottle.

I found this instead.

Looks like a bottle stopper, right?  It's actually a finial from an old temperamental curtain rod whose two ends had become jammed which rendered it useless.  But the finials were a nice shape, so I kept them.  And I'm glad I did.

And I found some of this to solve my Clamato problem.

I sprayed the wine bottle with this hammered finish spay paint to give it texture and cut down on the opacity before its final coat with the red spray paint.

Close up time!

Tomorrow, I'll show you the rest of the hearth room.  Here's a preview.  You'll want to see the before of these chairs!

I'm linking up!