Fireplaces

In New Mexico we call round adobe fireplaces “kivas.” In Arizona they call them “beehives.” They appear to me to be approximately the same thing, although I’m not an expert. Regardless of what you want to call them, our new one in Tucson was a decidedly ugly one.

A sinister white thing with a gaping black, red-rimmed hole. Surrounded by pale blue walls? Comic, maybe in a slightly horrid way. A clown gone wrong?

I’m waiting for the pandemic to be over before having a crew of painters repaint the entire house. Meanwhile, I had to tackle that kiva myself!

First I painted a little bit of neutral beige wall color next to the kiva so I could pick out a kiva color without the blue wall just confusing the issue.

After some debate, I chose one that I thought would complement and blend with the brick, and I gave it a try.

As expected, it does not look good against the blue, but I think it’s fine next to the neutral color. That neutral beige wall color isn’t exactly our final wall color, but it’s close. It’s just something we had leftover from our house in Albuquerque. We’ll eventually need to redo that wall with the new wall color, but it was good enough to give me an idea of whether the new kiva color will work.

In this final picture, there’s only one coat of paint on the wall to the right, so blue is still showing through. Plus, it’s a different color – a lighter beige – than the wall on the left. I was trying it out but then decided against that one.

We’ll get it all professionally repainted at some point. Meanwhile it’s a work in progress!

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