rass doesn't peel....probably you have lacquer on there and that's peeling. Is it solid brass or plate? Either way....what's peeling isn't "brass" but the lacquer meant to keep the brass from tarnishing. Linda C

Thanks II. The furn is staying. The wall over the mantle is currently a gold color, yes. The whole room used to be that color. Above the mantle is the last section that needs to change. I have that kitchen blue paint I could use. I also have the khaki-ish sidewall color. I could try to darken it a little for the area above the mantle. Thanks, AMy, 1.Side walls are raffia basket, the new color which will remain. 2. Above the mantle is some variation on the old color - boardwalk. It needs to change. The area above the mantle, and possible the mantle itself, is all I want to paint at this time. OPtion 1: sliver basically white or whitish. That sliver looked good painted slightly lighter than the bricks in the before. But now the bricks appear much lighter and more prominent than they did before, and I don't see how I can paint the sliver any lighter than the bricks? Can I? Should I? The bricks are color matched to my kitchen cabs, which are very close to BM Navaho white. The sliver is in a bit of a hole, so maybe whatever I paint in there will look darker? I need the mantle to stand in for some kind of architecture or richness in the room. Am I seeing it wrongly? Influence me. With this option, I could paint the mantle another color but I wouldn't know what. Brown is too much like the wood tone the mantle should really be, and would look like stage makeup. Taupes are too tricky. Blue? Option 2: Sliver painted Sidewall color. I'm thinking of taking the side wall color and trying to darken it just a little and paint the sliver. This might provide a little interest and make that wall recede a tiny bit. Or, maybe the sidewall color will appear a bit darker when it is painted on the sliver because the sliver is in a hole. Option 3: Sliver painted blue.

If you paint the hearth, choose a color that tones in with or matches the floor. I painted (color washed, really) the brick fireplace wall in our previous basement with the neutral off-white wall color. I took some hideous vinyl tile off the concrete floor, painted the floor chocolate brown, and painted the raised brick hearth black...I used flat black for the first coat, and then went over only the surface of the bricks with satin finish...looked more natural to have flat finish on the mortar. I often recommend that technique for any color of painted brick.

Paint samples are on the brick, and it's down to Revere Pewter and Balboa Mist. I much preferred the more gray beige over the more brown tones. (romy718, Revere Pewter is lovely in your room!) Practigal, the fireplace is purely decorative. It originally held a gas heater, so it's not deep enough to burn wood anyway; we capped the chimney when the brick mortar started to fall apart, and we capped the gas line to that part of the house when they detected a tiny leak, so we couldn't use it even if we wanted to. It is kind of weird to pick a paint without the context of other decor. I do have a rug that's going in the room, so I'm referring to it. The furniture that's going in that room now is the leftover reject material from the rest of the house. I want to put in some cozy Craftsman style seating--maybe a Morris chair and a rocker--but that will have to wait until the bank account recovers. So I'm just going to pick the best color I can for now. I can always repaint it later. The corbels arrived (I don't know if ArchitecturalDepot.com is always that fast, but they got it to me overnight when I paid for three-day shipping) and I'm working on finding stain to match the mantel. I'll get back this next week--we spent today moving stuff out of storage, and I've got boxes to put away. But it's so cool to see the progress. Oh, and my husband's reaction was a sort of bemused resignation. This isn't the first time I've jumped head-first into a project without consulting him. Sometimes this goes very well; other times it's a disaster. He asked me today if it was too soon to tease me about the bookcases (which I purchased from Ikea and assembled before we realized I had measured wrong and they wouldn't fit in the space--and that therefore required some pretty major engineering to make work). (I told him yes, it was too soon. Way too soon.) The fireplace looks to be not only a success but also one that doesn't require any effort on his part, and as he's teaching an accelerated summer chemistry course and has almost no spare time, that's a win!