Winter is the perfect season to bestow your home with a fireplace. Nina and Larry collaborated on their living room makeover, which features a striking accent wall where textiles and antique furniture flank a faux fireplace with an evolved-over-time effect. Here are their tips for making a masonry-free hearth:
■ Blend a new fireplace into a room by placing it along a wall with architectural interest. The Hurts built a paneled wall and installed rough-hewn ceiling beams to lend depth and dimension.
■ Give the feature authenticity by choosing an antique mantel and surround.
■ Construct a wood ledge at the base of the fireplace opening for a hearth, and face it and the opening with brick veneer.
■ Center a vintage-inspired electric stove in the space.
■ Accessorize with related artifacts such as a match holder, bellows, bedwarmer and kettle.
Nina’s decor celebrates her passion for the past. In the living room, she formed a cozy seating area by pairing a contemporary sofa with old-time furniture, including a spinning wheel, end tables and a ladder-back chair with a rush seat. She used a paint treatment to make the new coffee table look older. “I have quite a lot of prims with touches of antiques. I have some reproductions and some I bought and some my husband made,” Nina says.
In the master bedroom, Nina outfits the sleigh bed with a new starpatterned quilt and shams. “They add texture and a pop of color and make a great memory of an old quilt that your grandmother may have made years ago,” she explains.
Nina complements the bedding with a prim blanket centered above the headboard, country curtains, and a wing chair upholstered with redand-white striped fabric.
Boost sweet details by tying a short twine garland of fabric strips and dried apple slices to dresser pulls.
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