Luckily we had many wood scraps in the garage from previous woodworking projects that we have worked on so we were able to salvage what we had and the best part-a lot of the pieces were already cut close to the size we needed which meant less sawing-YAY!!. We followed the plans from the site but the only thing different is that goosey wanted to place the fireplace over our heating vent so she made the sides wider to fit over the vent (the base of the fireplace rests in front of the vent and the sides stretch beyond the base). She mostly did everything herself with my supervision. Once she had the whole thing assembled, she painted it and then sponged on paint to look like brick.
Then she placed it over the vent and added a black poster board to create the back, sticks, tissue paper, and battery operated tea lights so when the heat turns on, the tissue paper begins to move and with the tea lights, it looks like the fire is flickering! So I can now officially say our cats are pretty spoiled considering they have a fire place and we don't! We're looking forward to placing their stockings on the mantel this year for Christmas!