We have been using a wood stove to heat our home for the past few years.  Using just electric heat for a house that is approx. 5000 sq. ft can be REALLY expensive (we learned that the first year we moved in) and since my husband owns a tree business, (free wood) using an alternative heat source is the perfect choice for us.  My goal this past month was to “play up” the area we have our wood stove installed.  Enter, The Big Black Wall.

When we first starting building our home, I always planned to have a grand fireplace made out of stone that covered the majority of this wall.  Once we did some research, like this article here, we went with a wood stove instead.  I am not going to lie, I was thinking this thing is kinda ugly, and I can’t really decorate it….. priorities right?

We knew we were going to need to move the wood stove over to fit our future TV.  While it was out of the way, we installed a black plate on the floor to protect our wood floor, I would like to consider that my “hearth” so to speak, and I took the opportunity to paint the wall before we put the stove back in place.  I had recently seen a pic on Instagram of a huge black wall with a fireplace and a TV, and I was inspired to do the same.

Enter this fella, you may remember Mr. “Ladder from Hell” from here…

This is my favorite paint brush, you can find it at Sherwin Williams.  It is a 2″ angle brush, and when I use this brush, I don’t have to tape anything off.

It fits perfectly in your hand and the angled brush lets you get the paint right up to the edge.

This wall took three coats and I used Tricorn Black from Sherwin Williams in Semi-Gloss.  The higher the gloss, the more wipe-able it is.

I removed the plates to the switches and sockets before painting the wall, and I hope to replace them one day with nicer ones.  But for now, I painted them black.

I used a small stenciling sponge to get into all the little spaces, and it eliminated drips completely.

I did the same on the light switches.

I also used it to get into the grooves of the plates.

I poked the screws into a styrofoam bowl and gave them good coat too.

They turned out better than I expected.

We put the wood stove in it’s new place, we need to fix the ceiling, and add some trim, but now we have room for our TV, and even though this isn’t my “grand” fireplace I had always dreamed of, I love it and it is a perfect fit to the rest of our home.

This is how we are planning to finish this area, we have a 70″ TV going up and the Hubby is going to build a cubbie for us to store our firewood.  Then we will set up the furniture around that. This is how it looks on a regular day.  We took my pink couch out of storage and it is already a popular place to sit, nothing quite tops a crackling fire and a cozy couch.

I am really pleased with the results, and now with my black trimmed windows, the room is really coming together.

We are focused on the kids rooms and bathroom now, so we won’t work on the rest of the room until maybe spring or summer.  If you have a wood stove and are curious of ways to incorporate it into your home decor, I have 2 boards on Pinterest dedicated to wood stoves and firewood storage, but because of copyright laws, I really can’t share them on here without the risk of getting into trouble.  Feel free to check them out!