Wednesday, February 15, 2017

Fire Place Makeover / Quick Fix


As many of you know, our family was blessed with our first Colorado home (I can't believe it's been a year so far!)
It has plenty of room for our family of 6....plus some.
It's a fixer upper and we have been slowly fixin'. 
I shared with you our kitchen update many months ago (click here to take a peek)
 and since then there hasn't been many changes because, well...fixing costs a pretty penny. 

One project that we really wanted to tackle was the fire place. 
We had a lot of ideas of what we would have liked to have done... my favorite being horizontally laid ship lap from the ground to the ceiling, with a rustic large mantel.
Then we thought of having beautiful stone laid...and then looked online at costs and scratched that off the list immediately.
  GASP
 We wanted a fireplace makeover...not an extra mortgage.
As life would have, other costs started surfacing (mainly vehicle repairs) as is always the case when we plan what we want to do with our cash flow.
 Then, as Providence would have it, we came across the idea to just paint the tiles and the surrounding wood, just leaving the mantel as it is for now.

Hold forth.

Paint the wood?
 I know.
For all of you honey colored wood lovers (aka Wilson Phillips peeps and acid washed blue jean wearers) this seems a bit insane.
I ,on the other hand ,can not live with honey colored wood ... it hurts my head. 
No prejudice intended...I just prefer either natural pine or darker stains.
I'm a rustic modern lover meets Little House on the Prairie...with touches of bohemian and southwestern flare. I don't think there's really a name for my style.
Eccentric may be the word I'm looking for.

At first we tried white washing the wood and it was an epic failure. 
Instead of it being crisp white it turned out almost yellow.
Zac was busy rolling on paint and I just stood at the door stop and said rather sharply 
"this has to stop." 
I literally felt like the yellow tinged white was crawling up my head...that's how sharply it was effecting my senses. 


I told Zac that at this point I thought the best plan of action was just to take charcoal grey paint and cover all the wood and tile.  
"All of it ?" he questioned.
"Yep" I repeated "all of it."
So he did...and it was immediately 100 times better.


We used black rustoleum paint to cover the brass face.
  I think a fireplace makeover for about 30 dollars is pretty swell. 
Now...to answer a few questions you may have...
or maybe you don't.
Yes...you can paint tile. I wouldn't advise it as a lasting fix for an area that's going to be getting wet (like a shower.) But for a back splash or for the surround of a fireplace, we were reassured by the Home Depot man that it works great.
Yes, we do put a primer on the tile before painting it with our color.
 No...you do not have to have heat resistant paint for a fireplace, just because honestly...it doesn't get that hot. 
We've had our grey beauty now for over three months and thus far...no chipping or bubbling or fumes. We may build a mantel eventually but really all we needed was to fix the 80's vibe in our living room ... and this solution accomplished that. 

Happy Wednesday friends

5 comments:

  1. Wow, what a difference! It's amazing what a little ingenuity and some paint can do. Great job!

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  2. My oldest daughter was passing by and caught a glimpse of your "new" living room picture. She said, "Oh wow! That looks so nice," not even knowing what your post was about. :)

    The charcoal grey is very distinguished looking and the wood mantel looks nice because of the contrast. Nice work for DIY!!!

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  3. Love it!!! It looks great, and the added shelves on each side really finish it off. I would not have been able to live with it as wood either. I have a ton of wood in my home...all natural pine :)

    Love the photos of the kiddos on the wall in your dining room....beautiful.

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  4. Not only did you give your fireplace a make over, it looks like you have a new couch, and photos in the dining area. When I visit in a couple weeks, your place is gonna look like a totally new place. All looks beautiful in the picture! Great job!!

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