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Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Fireplace Before and After

The fireplace in our living room has been kind of an eyesore since we painted the room white. The 70's ish brick with dark grout stood out poorly from the fresh white in the room. It was only a matter of time before we painted it.

I'd been doing some research and I knew that I wanted a sandblasted sort of white washed effect and I had kind of an idea of how to do it. With Spring Break last week and a cruddy, rainy day...I was itching to get something done.

I was hesitant to do this because removing paint from brick is pretty much impossible. I told B that I was worried I'd mess it up and he said that I didn't give myself enough credit.

Challenge accepted.


I went to Walmart. Bought some white paint and had it done by the time he came home. 

To do this I made  simple white wash that was half paint and half water. It was very, very, fluid. It also splashed everywhere as I was doing it so be prepared for a lot of drips and swearing. It went in my ear, dripped down my shirt and generally was terrible to work with.

All of the tutorials I read warned that the brick was going to soak up the whitewash but also said to blot it off between coats and do multiple coats. That didn't make sense to me. I did one coat with no blotting. It was really cool to see it sink it and dry right before my eyes and made it easy to get the coverage I wanted. It was more difficult to get the white wash into the grout lines. 

After one coat it looked exactly how I imagined it! That hardly ever happens for me.

So way before:

Right before: 

And after: 

Also after:


Teeny bad kitty prints....all down the hall. 

I call this a win!





4 comments:

  1. Oooohhhh...so pretty! I love how it turned out!

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  2. It's beautiful! I was also a little worried when this posted started out about painting brick white--I've just seen some really awful versions of that--but that is perfect and beautiful!

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    Replies
    1. Thank you! The plan was to paint it all the way white if the white washing went bad. I'm much happier with this.

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  3. It looks fantastic! I love how it looks with the color of the room and wow... I'm impressed. It really looks like it was meant to be that way from the start. Well done!!

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