Fierce Fireplace!

My fireplace has been ashy for years. It's in major need of some shea butter in the form of a massive cleaning. So I started by shoveling out all of the ashes.

There were a lot of these little shovel loads!

Then on my hands and knees I scrubbed down the hearth while singing "Cinderella, Cinderella, wash the fireplace Cinderella".

Then once all that was cleaned out I put back all of the candles:

Notice my black metal pointer silhouette. She was a First Monday find for $5. Wait, I mean I commisioned an scultpture artist to weld a figure of Tate into this silhouette-o-metal. Tate was so hard to get to sit still but, I think it turned out to be a real likeness.

Tate is already posing for her next commissioned metal artwork piece:

She calls this pose "The Lioness".

I do think the fireplace looks pretty fierce! Here is what it looks like at night with one candle lit:

I do have real fires in here on cold winter nights, hense all the ashes, but during the summer I like to keep candles in there.

So my next project will be painting out the whole inside of the fireplace black, with fireproof paint of course. Have any of you done that before? I think it is a much cleaner finish on a fireplace and I am now going to look up a tutorial on how to do just that!