Fireplace: Tile...Finally...Tiled!

I finally finished tiling! The big hang up was trying to figure how to handle the inside edge around the fireplace, where the tile meets the actual fireplace-proper. As you can see below, there's no real "edge" to stop the grout from flowing into infinity and beyond. 

And then I had "the idea"....and Brian and I had one of those moments where I looked meaningfully at him, and said, "Do you trust me?" He nodded, took my hand and hopped on my magic carpet and we flew around town, singing a hit ballad to each other. 

Ok some of that might have been slightly embellished. I've just got Disney on the brain for some odd reason.

So, "the idea"...

We picked up four metal dowels from Home Depot. These metal dowels absolutely made our hands nasty. They were covered in oil grossness, so the first thing I did was clean them. 

And then my dear hubterton-hubs cut them down for me. He probably wishes he was wearing a different shirt for this picture, but he makes up for it with the skinny jeans and hipster slip-on shoes.

Each dowel got a coat of black paint. I intentionally did NOT rotate the dowels when I sprayed them, so only one side got painted. I'll explain why I did this in a moment.

I moved my dowels indoors, and got ready to rock.

Using my pinkie, I applied a layer of construction adhesive to the un-painted side of each dowel. By leaving one side of the dowel un-painted, I ensured my adhesive would go on straight by using the un-painted section as a guide. You don't know how hard it is to draw a straight line on a dowel until you try! But by having one un-painted side, I didn't have to worry.

I glued the dowels around the inside edge of the fireplace, right up against the tiles. Ignore how washed out this picture is.....I was playing with the settings on my new camera and got lazy.

I added half tiles around the remaining edges and called it a day.

I still have a major dilemma with the grout color....but it's getting down to the wire, and I'm going to have to decide soon. 
Cheers!