I fell in love with this picture of a family room from Muskoka Living (here!) and I carried it everywhere with me on on my phone as we were making building decisions. It seems like everyone is painting over brick these days, but I still love it’s classic warmth.

It was the spring board for our fireplace and built-ins in our family room. Except that I found out that a curved fireplace was much more expensive than the standard square fireplace our builder provided. I was set on having that curve though, so here is what we decided to do: