We painted the fireplace white to update it just a little. I’m not saying it was easy. The paint sprayer came to life in the middle of our project and we could not turn it off. Sprayer thought, if ever I were to have a moment in my life to really be me, to just let loose, this would be it. While I applaud Sprayer’s boldness, it made things tough for us. Sprayer got Kevin in the face. Kevin, of course, couldn’t see with white paint clouding his vision, so he started stumbling around, and meanwhile, Sprayer went to town, just doing what he does, spraying the hardwood floor, the stereo, the ottoman. “Stop, stop, stop!” I yelled. This was not helpful. (Sometimes, in emergency mode, I freeze and yell things rather than springing to action.) “I can’t see, I can’t see!” Kevin said. Eventually, Kevin wrestled Sprayer down, I dotted Kevin’s white face with a paper towel and we cleaned up the offending white paint before it dried. Whew!
Before:
After:
We started with a white wash, meaning, we diluted the paint with water. (1 part paint, 4 parts water.) Then we brushed it on. That wasn’t working well because the brush was very drippy and the paint wasn’t sticking to the black (mortar?) between the bricks. That’s when Kevin remembered Sprayer, and then the paint went on much smoother (until aforementioned accident.) It worked well when Kevin sprayed and I brushed the paint around to even it out. It was also good to have a wet cloth nearby to wipe any drips.
Here we were halfway through:
The first coat looked like this (bad):
We stood back and looked at our work.
“What do you think?” Kevin asked.
“Um, I like it?” I said.
I hated it but didn’t want to say so because I was the one who wanted to start this project at 8pm on a weeknight. I had done some research before starting, and thought a white wash would be a good option for us so the brick showed through a little. But the problem was the black between the bricks just looked dirty and unfinished.
“Maybe we should try another coat,” Kevin said.
Whew! Glad we were in agreement.
It took maybe another hour or two to keep piling on the layers of paint with a paintbrush, making sure to get in between the bricks. I like that you can still sort of see the brick underneath. We kept the paint pretty thin.
So, to recap:
Before:
After:
After with rugs and pictures and whatnot:
What do you think?
shmooples 