White Brick Fireplace Makeover: BEFORE & AFTER
It is a monumentus day…because we finally finished our fireplace! The second coat of caulking is literally drying as I type this. Renovating our living room fireplace has been a labor of love for 3 months now. We ended up doing the whole thing ourselves which is not what we originally intended.
Fireplace before & after reveal
Just feast your eyes on this before and after shot and you’ll understand the massive transformation that this beauty has gone through. And WOW does it really transform a room. I’m super happy with how it turned out.
I knew I wanted to go with matte white brick for the fireplace. It’s simple, versatile, and to me, timeless. The problem was, it literally did not exist. I could not find white brick to install. I found brick looking tiles but none that were matte. After tons of searching I settled for a faux white brick panel. Faux brick is DEFINITELY not something I thought I would be okay with but it turned out awesome! You really can’t tell that it’s not real brick and it doesn’t bother me at all.
How we did the makeover
We found these faux white brick panels on HomeDepot.com and bought three. Lockie cut them to the size of our fireplace using a saw he borrowed from a friend. Before laying the brick we spray painted the actual fireplace matte black to give it a fresh look. It had some glue and silver spots on it so it needed a little boost. After that, we carefully screwed the panels one by one to the wood frames of the fireplace. We thought we would need glue in addition to screws but really screws did the job. The boards are very sturdy!
Then it was my job to fill the screw holes with Drydex and paint over them with a generous amount of white paint we had left over from our walls. I also painted the ends of the brick on both sides where we had to cut the boards. Finally, I caulked the sides and top with white matte caulking. We originally considered adding at border trim to the white brick to give it a more finished look, but we couldn’t find any so we opted to leave it as is.
What about the fireplace mantle?!
During our kitchen renovation I had been served ads from Rustica.com on Instagram a dozen times. I remembered loving their simple contemporary farmhouse mantles. It feels a bit weird to buy a mantle online without seeing it, but I did it anyway. Honestly, I didn’t really know where to go buy one in person.
I bought this Rustica “Unfinished” Wood Mantle and I really love it. You are supposed to “finish” the wood with a stain and/or sealer but honestly I’m kinda happy with it how it is. I may eventually seal it so the wood is protected but for now I’m calling this fireplace renovation finished!
Tell me what you think of our fireplace BEFORE & AFTER?!
