Here’s an interesting article on updating fireplaces by the Freshome Team for Freshome.

SRB Signature Kitchens and Baths is a full-service, one-stop shopping design center.  We have over 25+ years’ experience in this industry.  We have general contractors on staff and all of our subcontractors are fully licensed and insured. Servicing Lunenburg, Fitchburg, Leominster, Westminster, Ashby, Ashburnham, Lancaster, Harvard, Ayer, Acton, Shirley, Townsend, Groton, Pepperell, Bolton.

Today we want to share a story from Freshome reader Haiku, who completed a fireplace face-lift:

Most homes built around 70s and 80s usually have fireplaces with bricks varying in color from orangey-red to black-brown-red. Automatically, it makes the room look dated and drab.

One fairly easy fix is to whitewash the fireplace – it instantly makes the room look light and bright. However, it’s time consuming and can be a bit frustrating depending on how porous or dark your fireplace is. But it’s definitely doable! I’ve whitewashed two fireplaces, in both our previous and current home.

I mixed together equal parts of white latex paint and water and stirred. I covered up everything in my living room that I didn’t want to get paint on, grabbed a sponge and a rag, and went to work.

I sponged the mixture on the bricks, making sure to dab the drips with the rag. Sore shoulders – check. I waited a day to let the brick absorb the paint. The brick absorbs a lot of paint – so much that I had to do a second coat. When it was done drying the second time, it looked too uniform, so I got my sander out and sanded down a few areas. Hello dust!

As soon as I saw the fireplace, I knew I would have to whitewash it. However, unlike the first fireplace, which was built out of a brownish interior brick, this one was mostly red and black. Our chimney sweep said that it was exterior brick, which made it SO much more difficult than before. It took me well over a week, and I kept panicking because no matter what I did, I thought it looked bad.

I started with one part white latex paint and two parts water, which left me with a light pink fireplace. My girls were thrilled. I tried to fix it with a half-and-half paint mixture, and ended up with a pink-purple fireplace.

“No honey, there’s no dinner, as I have spent all day painting our fireplace purple.” So bad. Bad bad purple. I slept on it and decided to add a bit of warm beige on my current white paint-water mixture.