Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Updating the living room in our rental suite

Before: this is a picture of the suite on our house possession date. Note the yellow walls, blue carpet and dated brick fireplace facade. I think this was a working fireplace at one time, but it is no longer functional and safe.  


We did the updates in stages, as suite access allowed (ie. tenant occupancy). First step was to paint the walls (grey), paint the fireplace brick, and add an electric fireplace unit.

Next step is to replace the carpet. Once we knew the timing for the carpet install, I wanted to replace the ugly fake parkay laminate hearth with slate tile.  
Once the tile went down and dried, I grouted.  Since this isn't a wood burning fireplace, the hearth is only decorative, it doesn't have to meet safety codes for dimensions.  The parkay flooring hearth had to be temporarily set back in place (minus a notch out for the new tiles), since the carpet install was still pending and the tenant was still living in the suite. 


 In order to fit the electric fireplace into the fire box opening, it needed to be raised up slightly.  We did this with 2"x4"s cut to size to create a platform for the unit.

Since the fireplace unit is quite a bit smaller than the firebox opening, I crafted a DIY trim kit with various sized metal roof flashing that was spray painted black and fit to size around the unit.





After: now that the new carpet is installed, the updates are complete. 



Blog post by Heather Fulcher
Professional Organizer for Hire
Vancouver, BC, Canada
heatherfulcher@gmail.com
604-618-4829

No comments:

Post a Comment