White-washed out

Over the holiday weekend, my brother and sister-in-law came up from their home in the mountains. They are in the midst of renovating their 1920s bungalow, so I always enjoy picking their brains about household projects. While the boys were busy watching (and yelling at) the basketball game, I shared the wonders of Pinterest with my sister-in-law, Sheena, which led to the discussion of fireplaces. Oh our fireplace. It has been a conundrum to me ever since we put an offer on the house - what the heck am I going to do with this thing?!

Here is what I am talking about (please pardon the messy mantle):

With old houses (and ours is an oldie with a birthdate of 1909!), I really try to keep as much of the character as possible. I love the brick face and the woodwork around the mantle, but that hearth had got to go. I felt like little Heidi could come home any day with grandfather and put her wooden shoes by the fire.

While I liked the bricks, there were some blemishes and it appeared at somepoint the fireplace had caught on fire (not in a planned sort of way) and charred the cinderblocks in the back. I knew it had to be painted - but what kind of paint is fireproof? Leave it to the nice guys at Sherwin Williams to save the day! Naturally, grill paint is the perfect option to paint high heat areas. So that is what I did. I white-washed the brick first (1/3 part primer, 2/3 water).

I outlined the grout with pure white paint to give it more depth.

Then, I primed the hearth and painted with the grill paint. Now, I can look forward to snuggling up by the fireplace without thoughts of Heidi dancing in my head. :)

Have you guys ever tried painting brick and/or your fireplace?