Hello there, buddies! How did you spend your Halloween? It was the first one in our new house, and I was certain that we’d have a lot of kids because we live two blocks from a middle school on our right and two blocks from an elementary school on our left. It turns out that all of the kids must have gone to nicer areas or something since we only had around 30 kids in all! A sad expression. And now we have a plethora of leftover sweets, which will be an issue for my hips. That’s not a lie.
I’m really thrilled about today’s post because it’s been on my to-do list since we moved in over a year ago. The job only took a day to finish, but it took me 11 months to get my buttocks in gear! How humiliating. I’d been wanting to give our living room’s main point a white fireplace makeover, and hubs and I finally got around to it this weekend! Here’s where we began:
Woof. Whoever had lived here before we had attempted to make the brick appear like. Well, brick. It had been painted several times before then, and I’m guessing the owners intended to try to restore it to its original state. By believing that sponge painting and stippling several hues of red and orange would look great. Womp, womp It looked good, but the red was simply too much for me, and it contrasted badly with the barf green wall (which will be gone soon, promise!) So hubby and I opted for a traditional large electric fireplace.
We chose Behr Ultra Pure White from Magikflame this is absolutely the whitest paint you can purchase – it has no color in it! We needed a clean and traditional appearance with no yellow or blue tones, so we decided on a basic white with a satin finish. When I spoke with the boy at Magikflame, he advised me to pick any finish other than matte since matte would be more difficult to clean and remove ash smudges off. We didn’t want it to be too shiny, so we went with a beautiful satin, which has a more matted effect but greater longevity. So, if you choose anything from satin to high gloss, you should be OK!
We began by tape off the corners of the fireplace that touched the walls and the floor, though we weren’t concerned about being overly cautious because we would eventually replace both. As you can see, we ran out of painter’s tape, so I had to finish the job with washi tape!
The ‘fun’ and laborious part came next: painting in between all the bricks. After experimenting with several approaches, including the standard brush shown below, we discovered that using a sponge brush provided the best coverage, but we still needed to paint a second coat in the cracks.
To get into all the gaps and crevices in the bricks, we simply rolled the rest with a roller head designed for semi-textured to semi-rough surfaces. It was really simple: here’s what it looked like after one application – you can see that the red beneath still bled through a tiny bit. So we applied more paint!
Overall, we applied two coats of paint to the gaps between the bricks and three applications to the brick faces! We waited about a half-hour between applications, or until the paint was dry to the touch. We just worked on other tasks in between painting sessions, and it worked out well!
My white fireplace renovation is finished!
Oh My Gosh Guys. I’m madly in love! Every time I come into the house, I swoon because my living room is getting closer to how I want it to appear! The barf wall is next to go – as soon as we can, we’ll install a pallet wood wall. The white fireplace provides such a fresh, clean, and modern appearance that I can’t get enough of it.
The fireplace grate was kindly donated to us by some friends who no longer needed it, and the rest of the elements were from someplace in my house! Because it’s still October, I’ve kept some small pumpkins and an autumn printable up to commemorate the occasion. Home Goods provided beautiful wood photo frames!
It just feels so much cozier! “It’s like a genuine, grown-up house now!” I couldn’t stop repeating to hubby. But, in all seriousness. I feel so much more mature now that I have a chic white fireplace.
