Friday, August 23, 2024

Updating Old Wood Stoves and Hearths

 

Before

After I updated the wall behind the wood stove I sat back and looked at the stove and realized the stove door now stuck out like a sore thumb!  Rusted and repaired too many times I wondered what I could do to it without actually replacing it because it still works.  But I also wanted to do something with that hearth.  

You know the feeling, you start updating things and everything around it looks like crap. 
So I decided I could do both, update the hearth and stove door.

The door had to come first but I didn't get the final photo till after the hearth was finished too, so bear with me.

 I first did some research on painting a stove door, which I learned could be done with high heat paint.  I first needed to seal the insert panel as it had been rusting and decaying.  Let me tell you, painting is the easy part, covering up everything you don't want painted is the challenge!

With that task completed I could move on to the hearth.

As you can see in the before photo, the front of the hearth are simple patio blocks that were here when I bought the house.  I was never able to put in new flooring but figured someone would at some point so I just lived with this look for years....

I'd been working on some tile projects and it occurred to me that I could probably just glue those blocks to the floor, grout and paint them.  So I did.  

 
In the end I realized I should have done this years ago!  New flooring can still be put in, or carpet, but this looks so much more "finished" and tidy now.







Updating the Wood Stove Wall

 

Before

It began as it always does I suppose, with me looking at the wall with funky old shelves and wondering what I could do to enhance it. 




This would also entail removing a lot of old tiles that had been glued on to the fire-board backing.  Omg, I had no idea how difficult those would be to remove!  Some of them only came off with several blows from a large rubber mallet.
The shelves were much easier to remove.


I'd seen some cool finishes using the galvanized panels often used for roofing.  I don't have a truck anymore either but luckily I found three foot pieces at Home Depot! 

After

I am very pleased with the end result of this task, but it wasn't easy. 

In my next post I moved on to updating that ugly door on the wood stove too.




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