We went from no fireplace, to this!! Keep reading so I can show you how we did it and what we used!
Materials: (amounts will vary depending on how big your wall is and how big you want your fireplace wall to be)
Shiplap – we used this from Home Depot, it’s affordable!
1×6 (used for bottom trim)
2×4’s (used for framing)
1×4 (used for top trim)
1×8’s (used for studs and mantel)
Lattice trim (used for corner trim)
Fireplace Insert (we used this one from amazon)
Caulk and paint – we painted our shiplap with Sherwin Williams Extra White
Tools we used – Miter saw/circular saw, level, impact driver, nail gun, drill
I want to talk about the electric fireplace insert really quick before we get into the tutorial. My husband and I talked back and forth about whether we wanted an electric fireplace or not. I thought it may be cheesy… but after talking it over for a month or so we decided the pros outweighed the cons. One of the major pros is that it is completely safe around our one year old son. If we were to install a gas fireplace I would probably never have it on because of safety. Another pro for us is that we live in Houston and we love the fact that we can turn on the flame setting for ambiance without having to turn on the heat. Sometimes it is 80 degrees on Christmas in Texas so this is great for us! I was worried once we got the fireplace insert in that I would think it looked really fake and wouldn’t be happy with it. I don’t feel that way at all.. it is very realistic looking and I am so glad we went this route!
Now onto the tutorial…
We began by roughly taping out where we would want the tv, fireplace and mantel to sit, as well as how wide we wanted the wall to be. We used painters tape for this. We also removed base boards and quarter round from the wall.
Next, we used 1×8’s cut to the width of the fireplace wall and screwed them into studs. We made sure they were centered on the wall. We lined them up all the way up the wall. (note: we predrilled every hole to make sure we didn’t split any wood) These boards now can act as studs for our frame.
Next we started on the side walls. We built these on the floor and then raised them up. Because of this we didn’t make the walls reach all the way to the ceiling and planned to fill in the top at the end since it wouldn’t be supporting anything other than a couple pieces of shiplap. We used 2×4’s to build the walls.
After securing both side walls into the studs we started on the main, front wall of the fireplace. You can see how we built that here. Again, your dimensions will be different, but I will add our overall dimensions at the end of this post. We left that bottom large rectangle the exact height of the fireplace insert so we could slide it in later.
We then lifted the front wall into place and screwed it in to the side walls. We ended up having to shim the wall on the left a little bit to get it to be square, but knew this wouldn’t affect the overall structure of the fireplace.
Once the fireplace insert arrived, we centered it and made sure it was level, then we added a 2×4 to each side to hold it in place and to screw the insert into. Then we started on the shiplap. We started at the top because we didn’t originally plan to add trim, and we didn’t want a little sliver of shiplap to end up there. But if you do plan to trim it out like we ended up doing I would suggest starting from the bottom.
We worked our way down, leaving a small hole where we wanted to be able to hide our cable box and plug the tv in.
Now time for the mantel, we followed a blog post pretty closely for this and I will link that here. This mantel took about 15 minutes to build and I love the way it turned out. I stained it with one light coat of Minwax White wash Pickling and then one light coat of Behr Cordovan Brown Semi Transparent (you can see more on my Instagram story highlights).
We screwed 2 small 2×4’s into studs, making sure they were level and then we placed the mantel on top and nailed down into the studs.
We added lattice trim to the corners and the back of the fireplace. We chose to use this because it was low profile. This was very easy to work with, and I am so glad we decided to trim it out. We used a 1×6 board to trim the bottom and a 1×4 board to trim the top of the fireplace.
Some dimensions to consider:
our fireplace wall is approx. 73″ wide and 13″ deep
49.5″ from floor to bottom of mantel
16.5″ from bottom of fireplace insert to floor
the mantle is 8″ x 8″
we got the 45″ fireplace insert
55″ Samsung Frame TV (read below)
The total project including the fireplace insert but not the Samsung tv, cost us approx $1,000.
And then it was done! I can’t believe we now have a cozy fireplace, just in time for the holidays! We didn’t want to give up the functionality of having a TV in this room so we ordered the Samsung Frame tv which displays art when not in TV mode. It’s super convincing, and it’s way less of an eye sore than a normal TV. I talk all about it on my Instagram story highlights!
I hope this was helpful and shows you how adding a fireplace to your home is fairly easy!
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