Can fake fireplaces look great?
Not every home features a cozy fireplace and is able to enjoy the sizzling hot fire during the cold winter evenings and hang their family stockings on the mantel for Christmas. Building a fireplace, whether a wood-burning or a gas powered isn’t only quite expensive, but also really tricky when it comes to incorporating it into an existing home and making sure that it’s safe enough to use. However, if a real fireplace is beyond your budget, but you still want to have a hearth-looking feature in your home, you may totally DIY a faux fireplace out of the inexpensive materials and make it look incredibly realistic and cozy.
On top of that, you may upgrade a faux fireplace with the electric logs or hire an electrician to install an electric insert to transform a purely decorative fireplace into a functional and well-working one.
It can be a fireplace made out of a wooden frame, craft board, some paint and brick-looking tile. Or an old-fashioned mantel from a yard sale refinished, attached to the wall and remodeled with the wooden surrounding, faux stone hearth, faux firebox decorated with air stone blocks and log slices attached to the firebox door to imitate stacked logs. Or a cardboard box a creative mind managed to turn into a good-looking fake fireplace for Christmas time.
Your project choice will depend on several factors: whether you want it to be your Christmas decoration or a permanent solution/base for an electric insert, your budget, your DIYer’s skills and the tools you have/may borrow, the style of the room the fireplace will be built in, the additional features you’d like to include, the time and effort you’re willing to put into the faux fireplace making and the purpose it has to serve.These are the DIY faux fireplace projects you may recreate at your house on your own or with the help of a handyman and electrician if you’re not as great at handy stuff or if you want to take a fake fireplace to the next level and turn it into a custom and fairly inexpensive electric one.
Statement DIY faux brick fireplace
A repurposed wooden fireplace mantel front purchased on the Craigslist served as the base and the inspiration for this amazing and astonishingly realistic DIY fake fireplace. In fact, a number of reused materials (such as garden stepping stones for the hearth, leftover plywood, log slices from the dead tree) involved in the project allowed to cut down its costs.
Basically, this faux fireplace was built out of a repainted mantel positioned onto a hearth, created out of the 2×4s and solid plywood, and attached to the wall with the help of the same 2×4. Prior to the wall attachment, the back of the mantel frame was covered with the plywood surround with the pre-cut door to imitate the firebox.
After the mantel front was adjusted to the wall, the opening behind it was closed with another piece of plywood, faux chimney wall was built out of thin wooden planks, the frame, and the upper wall was painted, the hearth, the fireplace’s sides and the space of the firebox around the chalkboard paint finished door were tiled with the whitewashed air stone blocks for the more realistic effect.
Repurposed concrete garden steps turned out to be awesome hearth toppings and the 2-inch log sliced arranged into a semi-random pattern were glued to the door to look like log stacks. By the way, the faux firebox space was used to conceal the wires and the outlets for the TV and other tech pieces, which were set up above and on top of the faux fireplace.
Easy DIY wood-framed faux fireplace perfect for an electric insert
This project is a lot easier than the first one, and it’s cheaper and less messy as well. It took a wooden frame for the hearth, firebox, and the mantel front, two pieces of oak plywood for the hearth top and the mantel, thin trims for the decorative element, white and dark paint for the finish and a few tiles for the firebox to get this amazing faux fireplace installed.
Easier said than done, of course, but this project requires fewer skills, less time and less investment while allowing to reach a similar realistic result and leaving some firebox space either for electric logs, or a small electric insert or rustic lantern decorations and bulky tall candles, which will make this faux fireplace just incredible.
Let me know which project you liked more and proceed to building your own faux fireplace to boost the Christmas magic and finally have a somewhat real mantel to hang your stockings and garlands. If you experience any difficulties, don’t forget to visit HireRush.com to contact a handyman for a piece of professional advice or assistance.
