While drinking my morning tea and re-setting my circadian rhythms for 30 minutes with my beloved blue light, I always notice the Edwardian fireplace "featured" in our living room. The mantle is painted a basic shade of black (save the faux marble designs which are made to look like the real marble inset - can you tell which one is real?) and it has rusting iron insert with these horrid flowery granny tiles. Additionally, whatever ancient system that was supposed to keep the chimney gunge way up in the chimney has clearly failed. Thus some swift-thinking fireplace expert shoved several orange recycling bags up the chimney to hold back the flow of 100-year-old debris from falling into our living room. Depending on how much the wind is blowing, one can see just enough of the orange recycling bag creature as it breathes in and out of the chimney entrance.

For almost a year now, I have looked at this fireplace while sipping my tea and wondered "What can I do to make this Edwardian monstrosity in my living room look just a bit better? Gut it? Paint it? Get some new tiles? Bring back some black Rust-o-leum from the US? Or maybe just paint the tiles?" Luckily, there does exist an inspiring British invention of tile paint, which was clearly brought into being due to situations just like these...