drystonemason - thanks for the offer! I wish you lived in Colorado. My husband and I have a 70's wall o' brick. Really, the entire back wall of our den is covered in blond brick and the sides have custom built (70's style) cabinetry over the brick. We are planning to rip the cabinets out but our question is, what is the best way to reface this much brick? We plan to put travertine tile below the mantel to break up the look but on the rest of the wall, from what we have read, we have a few options. 1) Use a lime based plaster (not drywall compound) to fill in grout lines and eventually build up and smooth out to a rough, toweled on surface 2) Use mortar and stucco to achieve the same look. 3) Using drywall we can either frame out the whole wall and start over or use liquid nails (a lot of it) to put sheetrock on the areas that are not tiled. Hoping you might have some suggestions on what the easiest route would be considering it IS a whole wall. I will see if I can get a picture to insert which might be helpful.

Holly that is what we did when we did our kitchen last year. The freestanding Valor was already there from when we had opened the fp in the kitchen and MBR during the 1st remodel. When we had the kitchen gutted to the studs we found 2 brick chimneys. One was where the sink was and the other was the one that was hidden in the wall and we already had the mantle there and the Valor. So we recovered the one where the sink went and I got up on a ladder and stood on the mantle and cleaned the mortar off and coated the exposed brick with a couple coats of water based poly. You have to do that so the brick dust etc doesn't drift down. I had a huge shop vac from my contractor and wore a mask . The cleaning of the brick makes a MESS. But it was worth it. I love the look. It is a main focal point of the kitchen. Please post pics. you download to Photobucket and then make the album public or click on the 3rd line down under the picture and then cut/paste it to the message here. It is easy and there are several tutorials for posting pics here. C.

(side note to jakabedy) WOW WOW WOW...I am in love...where did you find out out about these? Can they be used wherever drywall can be used? Thank you! Now on to the fireplace: it might look nicely integrated if you do the vertical of the slate you like, with a full-width mantel, which is placed at the same level as one of the shelves cut into the narrow sides. So it would be like a brown ring around the whole unit, with the slate going up the vertical. I'm with palimpsest that I prefer not to have the slate go only halfway up. I am digging the brown wrap thing, though -- could you do a mantel there on the other side too, to complete the ring?

Oh that's okay....Sometimes I'm looking on CL and I know we have the same vibe going on. I think you're right though----dfw seems to have better stuff. Maybe due to the floods down there? The sofa I showed above is on my CL. I like the table and that's the idea on CL...you need to know the area and check out the what the house looks like in the listing pics. It's part luck, part detective work :) Nice houses usually have good stuff. I had the same trouble with my coffee table...my table is too low (it's from the 70's and they just were that way, I think) and too short. But I like it and there are no decor police. Also, it might be considered a tea table, which have always been higher (closer to end-table height)..