I've been looking for months (ever since I moved into my new place) for a cat proof fire place screen so I could keep my ever curious critters out of the fireplace. Not so much because I plan to have fires, although that might be nice now and again, but because the fire place is filthy, covered in soot from years of use and has a shelf at the back which would be impossible to clean because of the angles involved. Of course, it's not impossible for Mak and especially Fil to get up onto said shelf and turning their snowy white paws into a black mess and then tracking that mess over the walls, the white cabinets, the fridge, basically everywhere.

While I was looking for a suitable screen, I have jammed a framed print against the fire place and buttressed it with a plastic crates full of books - not really the ideal set up for my living room. I was getting sick of having this shit cluttering my place, so I gave up on finding a screen for now and went to Home Depot to have a piece of plywood sized down to cover the roughly 28 x 33 opening. It's not an elegant solution, but it's a solution. Now the junk is out of the living room and the cats are out of the fucking fireplace.