Fireplace

When I was a little girl, my best friend's parents had a fireplace.  I'm not sure if it was functional, because they had faux firewood that would "crackle" and "burn" when you turned the switch.  I always enjoyed it, and thought it was so neat to have a fireplace as the "heart" of the living room.  I've always thought a fireplace would be fun, romantic, and neat to have. 

When we moved to The Grove, we saw the way the living room was arranged created an almost unusable corner. 

The corner was small, and there was a heat vent right in the corner.  This became where we put our TV, but it was difficult to work around the heat vent.  So, in my mind, I designed an entertainment center that would hold the TV, DVDs/Blurays, incorporate the heat vent, and also fulfill my long desire to have a fireplace.  This year with our tax return we decided it was time to replace our nearly 9-year old TV (which was on its last legs) with a flat screen.  We also decided that was the time to also build the entertainment center I had dreamed up.  Yesterday, we finally finished it!  Here are some progress images followed by two of the fireplace/entertainment center completed.