How to Paint Your Fireplace White

ORIGINAL POST DATE: April 12, 2016

We recently moved into our first home (well, a year ago) and due to unforeseen plumbing nightmares we didn't have extra money to do some of the updates we wanted. Thankfully the house was move in ready. There were just some cosmetic projects we wanted to do, nothing major. One of the first things we wanted to update was the gold and stone fireplace that is front and center in the living room. We would have loved to redo the whole thing but that takes some serious cash so I needed throw some lipstick on that thing.

I've been seeing the trend of white painted brick across pinterest but Josh was hesitant. Once you paint brick or stone, that's pretty much it. There's no going back. But this isn't some nice brick hearth worth preserving. This is old dirty stone slabs that might have been part of a crime scene at some point. I convinced Josh and then enlisted his help picking out paint and supplies.

Originally I thought we would need some sort of heat resistant paint, but it turns out we didn't since we were only painting the front surface and hearth, not the inside of the fireplace. We went with Valspar Reserve White Semi-Gloss Latex Interior Paint and Primer in One (yeesh) for the stone, Rust-Oleum spray paint for the gold accent on the screen and just some run of the mill paint brushes.

The stone was very porous so it needed stabby motions to fill in all the little holes and several coats. We also filled in some of the bigger gaps and holes with caulk (oh yeah!), and we did a quick paint over those patches once dry. Lastly we used 2 coats of the rustoleum on the gold accents and I think the final product is such an improvement. For under $30 we gave our fireplace a nice modern face-lift. What a difference a year makes, but seeing the "after" picture makes me realize that we need to update the realtor tan color of the living room and hang up some décor….one thing at a time.

In Summation: If you build it, he will come.