How To Whitewash Your Brick Fireplace

For the cost of a gallon of white paint this fireplace was transformed! Magic really does happen one gallon at a time when it comes to paint.

Fireplace Woes

Home buyers love a wood-burning fireplace. Personally I could take it or leave it, but it is nice to have somewhere to hang Christmas stockings. This fireplace was all wrong, however. It was so dark and heavy, and took up way to much real estate in the living room of the 1950's bungalow. In an ideal world I would have totally redone it with some light cobblestones or rough marble stacked stones. However, my budget for this reno was ~$0 and also needed to be done ASAP so we could move in and have our living room done. Thank goodness for whitewashing!

The Whitewashing Process

It really could not be easier - mix paint and water 50/50, I used Sherwin Williams high gloss white trim paint, because it is what I had on hand. I was a little nervous about the sheen, but it turned out perfect. I imagine you could use nearly any sheen of white paint and get a similar 'whitewashed' effect.

Once my paint was mixed, I applied it generously with a large, rough paint brush to the brick. Then, within a couple minutes of application I wiped it off with a rag. All the variation you see in the finished fireplace is due to differences in how the paint adhered to the brick, not anything specific that I did.

TOP TIP: Since the 50/50 paint and water combo is so liquid it splashes and splatters quite a lot upon application. Make sure you covered a large area of walls and floor around your work space to avoid issues.

Work in progress!

Finishing the Fireplace

The final portion of the process to revamp our fireplace on the cheap was to modify the mantel. In an ideal world I would have bought something new - like a reclaimed piece of wood and made a custom mantel. However, I realized that I could just take off the existing mantle, cut off the fluted leg pieces and reapply the top piece after having painted it white.

You'll also note that the fireplace is not as tall as it was originally. We realized we could remove 3 rows of brick without structurally affecting the fireplace surround. This gave us all the room we needed to install an articulating TV wall mount for our oversized TV (my husband would say it could be bigger!).

Finished and decorated!