A Home Improvement Project

Tonight I did a quick and free home improvement project. All by myself. If you're like me, you just might be in love with your fireplace. My gas bill last month was kinda high - probably because we ran the fireplace pretty much 24/7. But, it was totally worth it. (-:

The cool thing about this project is that it was free. I have lots of things I'd like to do - ideas swirling around in my head, but I don't have the funds... or, I should say, we're using the funds to pay off student loans! But one day....

Anyway, you know how a lot of fireplaces have those gold door things? Nothing against the gold door things, but I was going for a little more modern look. Here's the picture of what I'm talking about. You could call this the "before" picture:

And here's a before picture with the doors open:

Not bad at all, but I thought we could update it a touch. So, I got out my trusty head lamp, my purple tool box, and an old metal wrench (I think that's what it's called), and I got to work. I shimmied up into the fireplace and started unscrewing things. I wasn't really sure what I was doing, but that made it more interesting. (-:

Finally, the gold door came loose and voila! We pulled it off, took out some insulation stuff, cleaned it up a bit, and it looks great! Here's the after pic:

Pretty cool, huh? It's kinda hard to tell in the picture, but it's a lot more open looking, and the gold is gone. (-: It's looks kinda rustic/modern. Very cool.

And, to prove that I did the work, here's I am, with soot on my hands, sporting the head lamp, and workin' the tools:

So, do you have any cheap home improvement projects?

~Kathryn