Nothing creates a warm, cozy and inviting room like a fantastic fireplace but it needs to be the right scale for the room.

I recently made over another fireplace for a few reasons. It was way too small for the room, it was dated and , yes, I’ll say it, ugly and we wanted to make better use of the space. My first thought was to build up the existing fireplace to make it more substantial but in the end, it made more sense to tear it out and start over from scratch.

After the existing fireplace was removed, I laid out the plan on the wall, built a box around the firebox and installed the bases for the soon to be added cabinets.

The next step was to cut holes in the wall for the AV wires and to begin building the new surround and mantle. Then the new flatscreen was mounted above the fireplace.

I took some stock kitchen cabinets, mounted them on the bases, ran the wiring through the holes down behind the new surround and behind the cabinets to the receiver. Some trim, some beautiful new tiles, some baseboard and a fresh coat of paint and voila, a new fireplace which is a much better scale for the room and much more functional.