Faux Fireplace

I love fireplaces.  To me, they warm your soul, not just your body.  Since hubby and I have been married, I've dreamed of having one.  I grew up having a fireplace.  I loved helping my dad carry in wood and build a fire during the cold winter months.  He taught me all about kindling and what worked best.  Sometimes, he would even let me start it myself and I always felt so proud when I was able to get a fire going as good as he could.  To this day the scent of a fireplace burning somewhere in the air outside takes me right back to those special times with my dad.  It stops me in my tracks and I remember how much pride he seemed to take in building a fire for his family on cold evenings.

Our house doesn't have one and since I can't build a functioning fireplace, I decided to do the next best thing, a faux version.  It might not be just like what I had growing up but it certainly reminds me of that and brings back wonderful memories.  And hopefully it will provide a feeling of warmth for our kids too.

I used the cheaper wood from Lowes that is full of knot holes and it cost me a little under $100 to build.  I followed this tutorial, somewhat.  It took me an afternoon to build and I painted and added the barn wood the next day.  Not too bad as far as being time consuming.  And it really wasn't as hard as I thought it was going to be.  I've wanted to build one forever but always felt it was too intimidating.   It wasn't once I got started.

To achieve a glowing "fire" look, I built a box from the remaining scraps of barn wood and filled it with burlap, Christmas lights and wood logs.  To really make it seem real and have a little fun with it, I play my crackling fire in the fireplace app on my ipad.  :)  A couple of times, I even caught myself going to stand in front of it to "get warm".  Silly, I know.

I am so happy with it and really, when I look at it, I can't believe I did it.  I know my dad would be super proud.

For the top, I used an extra thick piece of barn wood that I sanded down and waxed.

I decided against using candles in the box as I didn't want to be worried about wax dripping everywhere, which seems to always be a problem when I group candles together and burn them.  Luckily, there is an outlet directly behind the barn wood so I cut a small hole in the wood to provide an opening so I could plug in the lights and have it be perfectly hidden.

Can't wait to decorate it for the holidays!!

Have a wonderful day!

Follow along between posts on Instagram!