Fireplace Re-Do

When Nate and I moved into our house, we loved it! We still do, but there are a few changes we have planned to do...it's a process :)

One thing I really wanted to do was update our fireplace.  It was the one part of our house (built in the 80's) that hadn't been updated, so it kind of stuck out.  I LOVE that it's a real wood burning fire place and I love that we have space to sit in front and just use it as a relaxing area...but I hated the way the fireplace looked.

I went on a search on Pinterest and found lots of DIY's for repainting brick fireplaces, but ours is stone and I knew it would't have the same effect.

Finally I came across THIS.  It was exactly what I was looking for.  Her fireplace looks very similar to ours in the before picture (although it's smaller than ours), and she even gave me a Step-By-Step HOW TO! For someone like me- very unartistic and uncreative- to have a step by step was a breath of fresh air.  I thought-- ok THIS I can do.

Photo Source

I showed it to Nate and he was on board.  He liked the way hers looked in the "after" pictures (like above) and considering all it took was chalk paint and water, he figured it wasn't a huge financial investment either.  I bought the paint and started.

Here's a before picture:

About 1/2 way through, I sent Nate this picture:

I looked at the fireplace and thought,

I don't think I'm going to like this and then what am I supposed to do? 

I can't just take the paint off!

 I was worried the whole time that if I didn't like it, I didn't have a back up plan or a way to fix it.

Good thing that once it was all done...I LOVED it!

It honestly didn't take much work at all-- a few hours of painting-- and my fireplace has been completely transformed.

I am obsessed with it and have received lots of compliments.  When someone who is really creative or has done a lot of remodeling work says it looks great, I take their word for it.  I assume my good friends don't lie ;)

I told Nate I wish I would have found this blog earlier and I would have done it 2 years ago when we first moved in! From the bottom of my heart, thank you Erin :)

For the record, I followed her instructions step-by-step minus 2 things:

1. I picked a more "antique white" for the chalk paint color.  I believe she used a gray.  All of our trim is off-white and I was afraid if it looked too gray, it wouldn't look quite right. I'm glad I used the color I did! :)

2. She did 2 coats, and I only did one.  After one coat, I liked that there was still some color from the stones coming through.  It made it look very natural and not too overly-covered in paint.  I did use a 2nd coat for a few areas where I felt like the wash (the diluted paint) wasn't quite covering as much as I wanted to- particularly on the darker stones.

This has made me think I can do more projects and I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not :)

xox,

Naomi