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.