From the moment we moved in, the appearance of the living room fireplace drove me CRAZY with its awkward, unbalanced mantel and brick surround. First of all, it was a stodgy red brick mess, which looked like it was plucked from the Little House on the Prairie. Second, the proportions were all wrong.

My husband and I talked about tearing out the brick and refacing the whole wall in some cool tile, but after a trip to the tile store and doing a little construction and materials math...yikes!

So after noodling around with some ideas, I finally came up with a very inexpensive scheme to just cover the existing fireplace (no demolishing!)...and a way to, finally, give us a fireplace that matched the style of our home.

I figured an asymmetrical design would dial up a more contemporary look and tone down the fact that the sides were not the same width on both sides (a problem we couldn't change, no matter what we did).

The photos show the original brick fireplace, then the final updated design where my husband added 2 x 4 framing to the brick to bring 2 of the sections forward, then covered it all in drywall. The finished design reduced the original 4 front planes to 2.

Then he textured the drywall and sanded it to a smooth finish. Afterwards, we painted it 2 different colors to accentuate the different planes.

The new design has completely transformed the living room (it also inspired me to rearrange all the furniture).

And here is the REALLY cool part: the entire project cost us less than $40 and absolutely no demolition!