Fireplace Makeover and Tutorial: How to Whitewash Your Stone Fireplace

Wednesday, August 5, 2015

Fireplace Makeover and Tutorial: Before and After

I am so excited to to share this project with you! I have been wanting to do this for years and have finally got up the nerve. I honestly don't know why it took me so long to bite the bullet and start, but I'm so glad that I did! 


Repainting the dated brass and black fireplace doors, surround, stone, and hearth updated the look of my living room so much. 

It was a little more time consuming that I first thought but it wasn't bad at all. It took me about 5 days working off and on. 
   
These are most of the supplies that I used for the update. 


1.  Painting the fireplace doors and surround


To paint the brass doors and surround I needed:

Rust-oleum High Heat Satin Black Enamel Paint
Foam brush
Fine Steel Wool
Cloth for cleaning
Paint stick
Paint can opener

The brush on enamel paint is more expensive, more time consuming and harder to work with because it is streaky and it takes more coats. But I decided to use it instead of the spray paint because I didn't want to tape everything off with plastic and make a spray tent so the paint didn't get all over my room, carpet, walls and me. 

Start by taking the steel wool and roughing up the shiny brass. That makes it easier for the paint to adhere to it. 



Then wipe everything off with a damp cloth and let it dry. Make sure you're staring with a nice clean surface and make sure to prep your area by laying down newspapers and taping off any areas if necessary. 

Open the enamel and stir, don't shake, you don't want air bubbles. 


Dip your foam brush in the enamel and lightly coat the tip. 


Starting at the top and working your way down, use even strokes and paint all of the brass. I also painted the black metal as well so it was all fresh and evenly painted the same color. Make sure and get in all the nooks and crannies. 


I waited about 10 hours between coats. It took me 2 days because of drying time and I did 3 coats. Now it looks fantastic and is super smooth and even, not streaky at all. 


2.  Painting the fireplace stones


The warm tone, orangey stones were never my style, and in my option, really dated my home. But the thoughts of painting it totally scared me at first. What if I messed it up? There's no going back to the raw stone once you get paint on them. So glad I got over that fear!


Prep your area buy protecting your floors and walls and freshly painted surround and doors. I used 9" paper and and blue painters tape. Also if you have any areas that are missing mortar, caulk and let dry completely before painting. 



To white wash the stone I needed:
Paint (I choose interior Valspar Signature paint in Swiss coffee in eggshell. I got a quart and have well over half leftover)
Water
Paint stick
3" brush
Old t-shirt 
Trim bucket
Paint can opener 


Open paint and stir well. Add paint and then water to the trim bucket and stir well. (I did a ratio of 1 part paint to about 3 parts water) I wanted a lighter wash where I could still see a little variance of stone color. 

Add the paint into the tray first (1 part paint)


Then add in the water second, and mix together well (3 parts water)


Dip the tip of the brush into the paint, don't use the same brush as you used to mix the paint and water, there will be way too much on it. Start with a small amount, it really goes a long ways. 

Start dabbing and painting and swirling your brush on the stones. I had to do all three techniques for it to look right. 


Then dab off excess paint with the t-shirt. I also gave the mortar a thin coat as well. The stones took one coat. You may want to do more depending on the look you want to achieve. 


Making progress!


Stones are done!



3.  Painting the hearth


The hearth took a little more work. I could have just left it white washed but it just didn't look right. It was smooth and polished stone so it didn't absorb the paint the same way as the stones on the face of the fireplace. It was too even and didn't look natural.


Luckily for me, my friend Amy gave me a few paint sample to try out for my walls, and they were just the right colors for the hearth, yay!


I got the idea for painting my hearth to look like stone here. I didn't use acrylic paint or glaze, I had the latex samples that worked awesome!

To paint the hearth I needed:
3-5 different colors of latex paint
Sea sponge
Paper plate

I drizzled a little bit of all 4 colors into a paper plate. Then got the sponge wet and wrung it out.
I took my damp sea sponge and dipped it into the paint a few times and then starting dabbing it all over my white washed hearth.



Make sure to turn the sponge all different directions and work randomly all over the stone until it looks right to you. You're not looking for uniformity and perfection, nature isn't perfectly symmetrical. 




Almost done. You can really see the difference between the white and sponged stone here.


That's it, it's pretty easy and it made a such a huge difference!


After finishing this project, it kind of started a ripple effect. Nothing that I hadn't planned on doing, but it pushed me to want to do things a little faster so my living room could be completely redone and updated. New wall paint and decor to go with my new fresh fireplace are next on the to do list!

Thanks for reading :)

14 comments:

  1. OOH!! It looks so good!! :) That's so exciting, I can't wait to see how the whole room turns out!

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    Replies
    1. Thank you!! I just love it! I just need to decide on a paint color, why is it so hard LOL!

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  2. Did you just paint the metal part of the doors or the whole thing?

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  3. I've seen this in person and it looks amazing! Good job!

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    Replies
    1. Thank you! I love it :) I don't know what took me so long to do it...

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  4. That turned out awesome,what a cool technique

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    1. Thank you! I really like it too, now I just have to paint my living room walls so it's all nice and bright :)

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  9. Is the top of your hearth limestone?

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