Bye, Bye Ugly Brick!

Heather Lahaise portrait of Remi, my wedding gift to Stevens

I know, I know, I know - I've been SUPER slack about posting! We have absolutely loved being married and being with friends that I haven't really thought about blogging.  Here is my first attempt to get better.

Forever ago, I posted about painting our brick fire place - click here for old post. I never re-posted about the finished product because we just finally installed the mantel last week. 

For a little refresher, here is the before:

My grandfather was in full support of us painting and changing the fireplace and walls but thought we should keep that garnet carpet. We are gamecock fans but everything had to go! (P.S. We still have the wooden fireplace mantel in the above picture.  Its a beautiful mirror piece from an antique dealer in Camden, just wasn't our style - if anyone is interested in in please let us know!)

Updated and painted bookshelf - Color Thatch Brown by Sherwin Williams

Last night we had our first fire of the season and in our new home!

This will have to do for now - I'll get a better before and after picture of the whole room.

Thanks for reading!

Painting Brick

 We decided to take a huge leap of faith and paint the wood paneling in our den to give the room an updated and more modern look - it was one of those decisions we had to be sure about because there was no going back.  If you look back at the paint post , you can see where we choose Sherwin Williams Paint Strip 21 and used the top 3 colors.

For the den, we used the third color down - Sherwin Williams Macadamia. Painting the den was one story but for now we will talk about the fireplace. 

We took off the antique wooden mantel and it revealed some pretty ugly brick. (Side Note - This mantel came from an antique dealer and we are looking to sell it if anyone is interested!!) The bricks were long, skinny, and flat and for some reason they were stacked on their sides the edges poking out to make texture.  We decided to paint the fireplace the same colors of the wall so it would blend in and not stand out so much. 

So here are your steps for painting bricks:

- Clean (by hand or with vacumm)

- Prime with a 2 in 1 primer

- Paint

- Enjoy your new fireplace!

This was much easier than we thought and very much a room-changer! To prep the bricks I did some blog research and hunted on google;  most people said to wash the bricks with thick sponge or cloth to remove any dirt, dust, soot, or cobwebs. We started to wash them but it was really hard to get into all the creases with a sponge and it hurt your fingers to do it with a rag. So we pulled out the shop-vac and vacuumed!

We asked the kind folks at Home Depot what we should use to paint bricks and they recommended Zinsser Cover Stain Oil Base.  This is a tintable primer so we had them tint it to the Macadamia color so we wouldn't have to do so many coats. (Even though it was oil based because brick is porous you can use an oil based primer & paint latex on top. )

After primer:

ONE coat of paint:

The only tedious step was taking a brush and painting all of the mortar between the bricks. No where online mentioned this step but it was must! We also had to use a small artist paintbrush to fill in the spaces that were right next to the bookcase.  And that's it - just 3 simple steps - clean, prime & paint!

Now all we have to do is find a mantel; here are some inspiration ideas!!

Thanks for reading!