.png)
When we bought our house the first thing I knew I wanted to do was tackle the ugly fireplace. It told the date of house. I decided to updated the fireplace by whitewashing the brick. As I went through many DIY blogs and post from interior designers, and felt a bit overwhelmed. Zoning in to one blogger that I enjoyed reading other blog post from and decided follow her steps for whitewashing. Only one problem with this is, I can’t find the post or blogger because I literally pinned 48 (yes I counted) different bloggers that discussed this in topic in their blogs.
Sad this is the only before picture I have of the fireplace.
The items needed:
White/beige paint
Bucket
Water
Flat paint brush
Old rag
Drop cloth
The Process:
After giving the brick a good cleaning I allowed it to dry a little. We didn’t have to let it dry completely because I would be adding more liquid to the brick. While the the brick was drying, I started to mix the white paint and water together, half and half, to get a consistency that wasn’t too thick, but not thin to where it would run off the brush. I took my brush and my bucket and started working from the middle of the fireplace. Using the paint brush to apply the mixture onto the brick, just stroke the mixture onto the brick; doesn’t matter which way. After you’ve painted a good area use your old rag or cloth to wipe in or blot the mixture into the brick.
Moving in squares on the fireplace I finished the first area pretty quickly. Once I got to the bricks around the mantle I noticed that the color wasn’t right for the way I wanted it. So I went back and did another light coat because I didn’t want to make it too white. As you can see I played around with some spots seeing which coating worked on the different colors of the red bricks.
No sanding just painting. It’s been painted now for almost a year, and I haven’t had any chipping. I also went back and whitewashed the bottom just a little more, you can see in the pictures the red shows through more on the bottom.
Once I got the whitewash where I wanted it, I couldn’t leave the mantle that wood color. So I took the white paint I had and decided to paint the mantle to soften the look. The wood didn’t mesh well with the white brick either, in my opinion it would have looked better in either a darker brown (darker color period) or a lighter brown.
Much better!