Repurposed Faux Fire Place Mantel

Repurposed Faux Fire Place Mantel

Submitted By The Rooster and the Hen

It’s been about two weeks since we shared our faux fireplace redo, and gosh darn it, I think it’s nifty. There are two problems with it, one of which I think we finally solved. The plants in the apple box just didn’t quite go with it, and it is a little big in scale for the living room. While we are considering moving this beauty to another part of the house sometime down the road, we finally got to the project of redoing the inside.

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Restoring A Painted Stone Fireplace

Restoring A Poorly Painted Stone Fireplace 

Submitted by Food, Wine and Home

One of the biggest eyesores in our house was the fireplace in the main living room. Some artistically-challenged previous owner decided to paint the stones with red semi-gloss. The tacky color scheme screamed, "Look at me -- I'm hideous!" When we bought the house almost two years ago, I wasn't sure what I could do about this problem, but I vowed to do something eventually.

Lamenting that the underlying stone probably looked much nicer, I inwardly (and occasionally outwardly) cursed the previous occupants for painting it. (I want to scream: "No amount of shiny bright red paint will make stone look like brick, dumbo!") As my husband and I were discussing how to update the fireplace without spending a lot of money, it dawned on me that I could probably create a natural stone look again. I spent some time browsing home improvement blogs and DIY forums, and finally decided to give faux painting techniques a try. I figured I could fall back on a simple monochromatic look if my art project turned into a misadventure.

My husband removed the glass doors and found that the surrounding metal cover was full of old insulation (probably asbestos) . We decided to throw away the doors and install some other kind of cover later. In the meantime, I had to do something about the unpainted bits of stone that had been hidden beneath the old cover. I used coarse-grit sandpaper and a scraper to smooth out the edges and remove drips, then applied white primer over the entire fireplace. I like Zinsser primer the best. It is a good multipurpose primer that is compatible with masonry. (Without primer, porous stone or brick will soak up a huge amount of paint.)

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Light my Fire: Mantles Galore

I wish this house had a fireplace, unfortunately it doesn't!  But I have been considering, for the last year making a faux mantel, and I have worked it into the layout of our room, yea!  So, even if we don't get to watch the fire and cuddle, I can at least have a child safe place to decorate for the seasons.

I have been looking for inspiration, and here are some of my favorites.  ( I have been collecting images since before Pinterest so i don't have sources for all of them sorry!)

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I love the mirror that Lauren Leiss has in her faux mantel.  I am definitely doing the mirror thing!

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What are your thoughts?  

Would you ever do a faux Mantel?  

Which mantel do you like the best? 

Check out my fireplace board on pinterest for more.

Or check out these other fireplace posts:

Living Room Remodel, Adding a Fireplace and Built in Bookshelves

Change to color of your brick fireplace: Stain it!

Dramatic Results from a can of paint!  White Painted Brick Fireplace

Fireplace Mantel Remodel with White Molding

Social Retargeting by Chango

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Living Room Remodel, Adding a Fireplace and Built in Bookshelves

Living Room Remodel, 

Adding a Fireplace and Built-in Bookshelves by the Anderson's

Today’s remodel feature comes to us from The Anderson’s blog, which documents this young and energetic couple’s adventure of renovating their first home.  Moving from a small one bedroom apartment in Chicago to a four bedroom home in the suburbs has been a fun journey to watch as they make each space truly their own.  I think you’ll be inspired with Eric and Courtney’s most recent project in their home renovation adventure: their living room.

Before:

After:

Background:

Within the first week of moving into the house, we decided the living room was the first place we wanted to update.  The previous owners were in their mid-90's and had a very interesting taste to say the least.  Mirrors, colored carpet, flocked wallpaper everywhere, etc.

The living room is massive and we wanted to add a big statement when people walked into the room.  We thought a fireplace and bookshelves on the back wall would eat up some of the empty space in the room and create a more intimate feeling.  Plus, it wouldn't take up too much space in the room.

Here's how we did it:

We first began by taking off the pink wallpaper and faded blue carpet, which revealed beautiful hardwood floors (lucky us)!  I really like the color blue, so I wanted to paint the background of the soon-to-be bookshelves blue to have a pop of color in the room.

Why would anyone cover these up?

Starting with the fireplace, we decided on white cararra marble to go with the white mantle we picked out.  I wanted the room to feel light and open, and I thought adding a dark marble to white built-in bookshelves would separate the wall unit.

First, we took out a small portion of the hardwood in order to set the marble hearth level with the floor and make the fireplace feel more custom-built.  Using some of the remaining wood planks, we then created a frame around the hearth to enhance the customized look.

Next, we had the fireplace box installed:

Then, we built the frame and drywalled around the fireplace box:

Ta da....

Marble facing and mantle up, along with the Restoration Hardware sconces I found on Craigslist.com:

We followed that up by adding bookshelves:

Painted them...

And added the shelves...

Lastly, we finally filled the bookshelves to complete the room!

The End Product:

Thanks for sharing along in our project!  It has been a lot of fun to see this room transform and we're excited to renovate the family room next.

Love,

The Andersons

Social Retargeting by Chango

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Beautiful Spring Inspired Mantle by 33 Shades of Green

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As always, thank you Cassity for having back to guest post again! You will find me at my blog, 33 Shades of Green, designing, crafting, cooking, and trying out all sorts of creative projects.
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Spring is almost here and my mantel was in need of a new look.  I decided on yellow and green as a theme (because what's more Spring than that?!) and went form there.

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Update the Color of your Brick; Stained Brick Fireplace

Special Guest Feature:
Roly Poly Farm's Stained Brick Fireplace

Hello fellow Remodelaholic readers!!  I am so happy to be here today to introduce you to my blog and show you one of my favorite projects.  My name is Jodi and the name of my blog is Roly Poly Farm.  I am brand new to blogging, so being able to introduce myself to you here and show you something I love is so exciting to me!  If you swing by my blog, you'll see me talking about my home remodeling projects, sharing only my best tried and true recipes, showing you a DIY craft or two and dishing about all the great deals and sales that I am always on the look out for! 

When we moved into our home two years ago, our family room looked like this:

We bought some new furniture and painted, but the coolness of the grey brick was like a giant elephant in the room that needed to be dealt with.  My husband was against removing and painting the brick, so I had to get creative and find something that would make us both happy. 

So I turned to my favorite friend Google and started hunting for a solution.  After a little searching I found something that I was able to use to transform by fireplace into this:

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Dramatic Results Of a White Painted Brick Fireplace

Dramatic Results Of A 

White Painted Brick Fireplace

contributed by Homemade Ginger

Ok, well maybe a can of primer and a can of paint...and some leftover blue wall paint from the kitchen. That's all it took to transform our living room over the weekend.  I absolutely love how it turned out. I've been wanting to paint our fireplace since we moved into our house a little over 1 1/2 years ago.  Get ready for some amazing before and after shots!

To be super dramatic, this is what the living room looked like when we bought the house:

BEFORE

Lovely dark wood paneling everywhere and really nasty carpet.

Then, we painted the walls and wood. The sellers put in hardwood floors...

A huge improvement! This is how it has looked for the past 1 1/2 years.  

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Fireplace Remodel With Built-in Book Shelves

Fireplace Remodel With Built-in Book Shelves

contributed by Beautiful Mess

This is our fireplace before the remodel. This was a pic taken a few years ago. It's the only pic I could find, showing the fire place as a whole. I have always wanted shelves on each side. So during Q's two week break he decided to tackle this project with the help of his brother and Dad.

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Faux Painted Brick Over White Fireplace

Faux Painted Brick Over White Fireplace

contributed by Pretty Handy Girl

This is the first in a five part series on renovating our living room:

1. Faux painting brick over a previously painted white brick fireplace (this post)
2. Lightening up a room in 5 steps
3. Painting decorative graphics on a wall
4. Preparing to Install Antique Heart Pine Floors (and living to tell about it!)
5. Installing Heart Pine Floors and the Final Reveal

I know the trend lately is to paint fireplace brick white. Especially if the brick is an ugly bright red or some other ugly color. I'm pretty sure that is why our fireplace was painted in the first place.

Before Shot

But, the fact that our fireplace, mantle and the built-in bookshelves on both sides of our fireplace are white, made for an overwhelming amount of white on that one wall. I thought about painting the mantle, but only briefly. I really wanted the warmth and contrast of bricks to set off all the white in our living room.

I stumbled across a few websites showing painted brick here and here. Then I thought, "If someone can do it, then there is a 95% chance that I can do it too!"

I wasn't sure how it would turn out, but in the end I am amazed by how real it looks. And, how easy it was to do! The true test came when I fooled the builder of our house (he has lived on our street for over 30 years) into thinking I had stripped the paint off the bricks! Sweet success.

This is a relatively easy project. It took several hours, but can be done in sections.

Materials Needed:
TSP cleaner
Scrub brush for use with TSP cleaner
Drop cloth
Newspapers 
Painters Tape
Paint Roller and Tray
Stiff 2" paint brush
Car wash sponge or large 6" x 3" sized sponge
Spray bottle with water
7 paper plates
Rags for clean Up
Acrylic Paint (see below for colors)

Before you do anything, buy some TSP (tri-sodium phosphate) cleaner at the hardware store and follow the directions to clean your brick. Be forewarned that you may actually like the color of your bricks once they are clean and dry! If you still hate the color, proceed...

After working up a test board by playing with several color combinations, I chose a warm brown brick color. I also tweaked my mortar color before painting it on my fireplace.

I covered the mantle and bookcases by taping newspapers to them. Then, covered the floor with a drop cloth.

I mixed up a small container of my mortar color. I used some leftover latex satin taupe paint from our other house and added some black and a little dark brown to achieve the perfect mortar color.

My color looks like this warm gray cement color:

I painted all the mortar areas between the bricks with a 2" paint brush.

As the mortar color dried, I mixed up a bucket of my base color for the bricks. Then poured it into a paint tray.

Then, I laid out my seven paper plates and filled the first one with a deep chocolate oops paint (Valspar Latex Eggshell Chestnut).

And poured a half dollar size of the following colors onto the other plates (one color per plate).

I used a paint roller to roll the base color onto small 3' x 3' sections of my fireplace. (Don't worry if the paint doesn't soak into all the grooves. Some of the white showing through made my bricks look old and rustic.)

While the base color was still wet, I covered my sponge with the Chestnut color. Then dipped the sponge into one or two of the brick tint colors. I sponged one brick at a time using the same color tints sporadically around the wall. Keeping the brick colors varied and random make them look real!

When the sponge needed to be reloaded with paint, I began with the chestnut color first, then added one or two new color tints to the sponge. You will have to refill the paper plates as you use up the paint.

I kept working in small sections, to be able to work while the base color was still wet (use the spray bottle of water to lightly wet the bricks if it dries too quick).

The best part was that if I didn't like a color, I could go back over it and try a different tint. Notice how I randomly dispersed the darker brown bricks. This is key to having a realistic look.

On the hearth I had to press more gently with the sponge since the mortar lines on our hearth were almost level with the bricks. I kept a wet rag near by to wipe up any wandering brick paint.

Close up picture of the bricks.
Notice how the white specks showing through really make the bricks
look like they are re-claimed and rustic.

After Picture

Daylight picture after decorated for the holidays.

I can't believe what a huge difference painting the bricks made in our living room. It warmed up the space and actually made our fireplace recede into the room. Let's take one more look at the before and after:

Side note: The latex and acrylic paint has held up great (even after several fires using our gas logs.)  If you need to paint the bricks inside the firebox, you will need to use paint that is heat tolerant.

And for those wondering how long this took. Including the prep work (cleaning, taping, mixing colors) it took about 5 hours total. Not too bad since I'm a night owl and could watch DIY network while painting!

Be careful not to put anything heavy on the hearth for a few weeks while the paint hardens.

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Fireplace Mantel Remodel with White Molding

Fireplace Mantel Remodel with White Molding

contributed by Amber @ HOUSEography

We are lucky enough to have two fireplaces in our house - one wood-burning in the living room and one gas in the family room.  Soon after we moved into the house, we covered the blackened and dated brick fireplace in our living room with a tile and wood paneled fireplace surround and mantle.  Fast forward 6 years later and we are nearing completion on our addition.  Instead of having our builder finish every last detail, we decided to save a few projects for ourselves so we could put our own stamp on our beloved renovated house.  The new mantle was one of those projects. 

Here's the BEFORE (after our builder was basically done) -

Then, Jim asked me what I wanted it to look like and I told him I wanted the same as our living room.  I think he was a little surprised (and super happy since he had already knew what he was getting into!).  So, we set out to mirror the same details   A little tile work both on the hearth (level with the hardwood floors) and surrounding the gas fireplace, some thin plywood and some small picture frame moldings and we had a great after.

Pretty impressive I think.  Jim really makes some amazing stuff happen in our house in a weekend or two (much more on that later)!  I had no part in it other than the basic design and some caulking and painting.

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