Cardboard Fireplace and Logs

This year I wanted to start decorating early for the holidays to make it fun and festive for our girls, now that they're old enough to understand more about Christmas and Santa Claus. I'm so glad I decided to take on this DIY project, ever since I finished the fireplace it has made our living room so much more cozy. Keep reading till the end for a bonus tip to make it extra realistic!

I try and be as cost effective as possible with all my projects, and I happened to luck out when I was driving past a side entrance of our local shopping center and saw a store employee taking a ton of cardboard boxes from their shipment to the dumpster. I turned around and asked if I could have all the cardboard boxes, and naturally he agreed since they were about to go in the dumpster anyway. Score! Since it's the holidays I bet you can go into some stores and ask if you can have any boxes from their shipments that they're planning on throwing away, if they didn't get any shipments that day then offer to leave your phone number to contact you when they've received a shipment. You can always just go and buy some moving boxes from Walmart or Uhaul, and they'll be in better shape for the fireplace.

I don't want to give out exact plans with measurements of the boxes you'll need, this is more of a 'how to' post to give you inspiration and a little instruction, so you can come up with your own fireplace plans that will work for the boxes you find and for the space you have in your home.

Tools You'll Need

• Pen

• Scissors

• Box Cutter

• Measuring Tape

• Hot Glue Gun

• Sponge

• Paint brush

• Saw

Supplies You'll Need

• Cardboard Boxes

• Packing Tape

• Small Boxes (cereal, top ramen, or diaper boxes, etc)

• Wooden Slats

• Contact Paper

• Paint

• Hot Glue Sticks

• Orange or White Lights

• Wood, Shelves, or Cardboard for the mantle

I started off by cutting one of my boxes in half to get the two side columns, as you can see in the picture on the left I originally planned on having a base ledge, but I thought it looked too boxy, get it? If you want a really sturdy fireplace that's capable of holding up a wood mantle and other items, or if you just need one that's toddler proof, I suggest filling it with other smaller boxes so it won't cave in. That thick round cardboard tubing is the main support for my fireplace.

Next, I found some damaged wood trim slats in my shed that I cut to fit the width of the fireplace, so I could have sturdy support beams for my wood mantle. After that I cut out the rest of the cardboard pieces I would need for the structure of my fire place (the back and side walls, the top which is connected to the front facing arch, and the base floor). I then used packing tape to tightly secure the side columns, before covering all the cardboard pieces with white contact paper. Once all the pieces of the fireplace structure are covered with contact paper, you can go ahead and attach them together with packing tape. I wouldn't worry too much about covering the top with contact paper if you're planning on adding a mantle.

My husband Jesse brought home from work a giant piece of cardboard that I used to sponge paint all the bricks with white primer paint I found in my shed. I used a box cutter to quickly cut all the columns apart, and then I used scissors to neatly cut out individual bricks. Warning: this part may result in blisters! Once you've cut out all the sponge painted cardboard bricks, you can go ahead and hot glue them onto your fireplace. For the rounded edges, I placed a brick over the area and traced with a pen the rounded edge I would need to cut with scissors before hot gluing it on.

For my mantle I used two wooden book shelves, but you could go without a mantle and just cover the top with contact paper and bricks.

I got the idea of the cardboard logs from this post by leroux on Imgur https://imgur.com/gallery/3Vy8J, but I thought I would document the process more clearly for my post. You'll want to figure out the width of the logs you would like for your fireplace and cut out two card board pieces and roll them into logs to make sure they will work. To get the cracks that will allow the light to shine through, you will want to use a box cutter to cut horizontal and vertical lines on each side of the cardboard as pictured on the left. I mixed together brown and black matte paint to get a very dark charcoal brown color. I have about every color of Matte Acrylic Paint by Apple Barrel in my arts and craft closet that I got from Walmart for 50 cents a bottle in the 2 fl oz size, and I just mix colors to get the shades I want. You'll want to paint one side of each piece of cardboard with this dark color using a paint brush. I then mixed together a grey ashy color that I sponge painted over the dark color to make the log appear ashy. Once the paint has dried roll them into logs and secure with your packing tape, and then secure the two logs together on the outer sides with tape. You'll notice that the logs will be pretty flimsy due to the cuts you made in them, so I added a piece of cardboard inside the bottom log to help hold up the weight of the top log and lights. Cut a hole in the back of each log to feed the light cord through, and then cut a small hole in the back of your fireplace wall so you can plug it into a wall outlet. You may find that you need to cut the slits a little wider in certain areas to allow the light to shine through better once you've rolled the logs up and added the lights. To make the log look extra realistic, peel up some pieces of the cardboard to make it look like bark peeling off the log.

BONUS TIP:Place a bluetooth speaker behind the logs and play crackling fireplace sounds from Youtube, here is the one we like to use https://youtu.be/ZY3J3Y_OU0w

I hope you enjoyed and found some inspiration from this post, feel free to share with friends! Questions and comments are always welcome below, I'd love to see pictures of your own DIY cardboard fireplaces :)