Fireplace Makeover

Welcome back to my blog.  I hope you had a wonderful Christmas.
Thank you for all of your sweet comments regarding my Christmas Home Tour.

If you missed it, you can check it out here.

In the Home Tour I included photos of my newly renovated fireplace.

Today I'm sharing a little more about that transformation.

It was a labor of love but so worth it!

Here's the "before" picture.  It was basically just a painted wall.

In this picture you can also see the small mantle that our friend beefed up for us.

I wish I could say that I'm handy enough to have transformed this fireplace all on my own but that is not the case!  In my home any makeovers we do often take a village!

I always tell my friends when they ask how I get these projects done that, "I know people!"

In this case, our dear friend Todd came over and he and my husband put up these faux brick panels onto the fireplace for me.

I especially love how he mitered the corners to give the wall a seamless look!  In the above picture you can also see the progress of the mantle.

Once they were done with the installation of the faux brick panels, I painted EACH AND EVERY brick!  That was a labor of love!

I painted them with any leftover chalk paint and wall paint that I had on hand.  I made sure they were all in the gray or greige family.
I would paint the brick, let it dry and then wipe it with a wet towel to remove some of the paint and allow the texture of the brick to come through.
I would then repaint the brick a 2nd and sometimes a 3rd time with different shades of paint to cover the red but still allow the texture of the faux brick to come through.  This part was really time consuming but necessary to acheive the look I was after.



I let the painted bricks dry overnight.

Next, I mixed some white grout and grouted the bricks to give them a more realistic and cohesive look.

I worked in sections.  I grouted about a 4 foot section at a time and then wiped the grout off of the bricks with a wet sponge.

It's a messy project so you really have to lay towels or tarps down to protect your floors.

Here is the left side before any grout and the right side has grout but hasn't been wiped down yet.

In the above picture I've wiped down the brick. 

Here it is all finished!

Grouting the entire fireplace took me about 5 hours.  I'm a rookie though, so it would probably take someone else less time.

I LOVE how it turned out.

It has definitely transformed my family room and given it a little more character.

And here it is all decorated for Christmas!

Thanks for stopping by.

xoxo

Delilah



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Savvy Southern Style
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The Painted Hinge