jmerréll's post

**A DIY** When I moved into this apartment in 2021 I decided that this is the best layout for my furniture in this room. And while the fact that the room has a nice feature as a fireplace is appealing, it is unfortunate that it would have to be concealed and ignored. The couch can only cover up so much of the actual fireplace opening and its surrounding tile. So, the idea came to me of using some balsa wood planks that I had leftover to cover up the tile. My idea was to disguise the fireplace; or to make it less obvious that I was covering a fireplace. And while most people might assume anyway that there is a fireplace covered up, this aesthetic result looks much better than the square beige tiles that are under the planks. I think it adds the warmth and texture of wood to the space in a unique way and I think the walnut stain is fantastic in the room. An added interesting thing is the way I decided to layout the planks. I could have cut the 36” planks to proper sizes so that the planks didn’t overlap each other but I’m sorta lazy and I don’t have a cutter for that material anyway. It turns out that the overlapping adds depth and that looks pretty good in my opinion. Balsa wood is very thin and lightweight. I used Blu-Tack reusable adhesive to mount them on the tiles and on the wood.