How To White Wash A Brick Fireplace

Have you thought of whitewashing your fireplace? When exactly would be the best time?

Christmas time!

Christmas is right around the corner and I am behind! I usually at least have the Christmas tree up and decorated the weekend before Thanksgiving but this year, at the request of my older kids, we waited until the weekend after, which has turned into the week after, which may turn into the weekend after that. Whew!

New house, new challenges.

I mentioned last week that this is the first holiday season we have spent in our new house. Our living space is a little awkward and I’ve moved countless things around trying to decide where to put all our decorations.

It hasn’t been easy and it’s taking me longer than I want to get decorations up.

One thing that I wanted to finish before Christmas decorating began was painting the living room. I painted most of it several months ago; a beautiful deep navy blue. It’s a Behr color called midnight show. It’s gorgeous and absolutely perfect in our living room.

But when I decided to paint the back wall connecting to the hallway a different color, I stopped. I had run out of time to devote to painting and I was honestly just tired. So here we’ve been, for months, with a half-painted room.

As the holiday season crept upon me, I realized that if I didn’t finish painting before decorations went up, I wouldn’t be painting until after the new year. And that, in my mind, was unacceptable.

So, what’s a girl to do?

What any other motivated, determined, and far too confident person would do. Wait until the Monday before Thanksgiving, and paint the walls.

I was going for a medium light gray and couldn’t choose between two colors. So, I let my husband choose. Now the hallway looks like an icy blue. It isn’t gray. Not even close. I don’t blame him, though. I should’ve gone with my gut. If it works for Gibbs it can work for me. (Shout out to the original NCIS.) It doesn’t drive me crazy, so I don’t plan on changing it any time soon.

Since I was finished with the back wall and hallway Monday night, I decided to go ahead and white wash the fireplace Tuesday. I know! Crazy, right? Who does this when we should be making pies and cutting vegetables?

*If there are any more of you out there, I want to hear from you.

How to whitewash a fireplace

White washing the fireplace seemed like a daunting task, but it is not that difficult. It’s a very easy process and, depending on the size of your fireplace, can be minimally time consuming. Mine took me almost 3 hours from start to finish but I also took a lunch break in the middle of that.

The process is as follows:

• Mix ½ matte white paint and ½ water.
• Paint onto bricks. (I painted a 1X1 ft square at a time.)
• Leave for as little or as much time needed to get the desired effect.
• Wipe off excess paint.

The real trick to this is how long to leave the paint mixture before wiping. I wiped a small portion of my square every 30-60 seconds until it turned out the way I wanted. I still wanted to see some of the different tones through the white wash, so I left mine on for about 2 minutes.

Also, after I started, I was a little worried that I might not like it. It looks so incredibly different when it’s right there next to the red brick. I mean, there is a way to undo the white wash, but it is a much longer process that I’d rather not deal with to be honest. By the time I finished the whole thing, though, I was in love!

It’s perfect!

White washing the fireplace was something so simple and yet it made our entire living room look different. It immediately looked brighter and seemed to open it up a lot more. The only way I could be happier about it is if there were some beautiful wood floors to go with it!

Have you ever white washed brick? Do you want to now?  How are you preparing for the holidays? Are you finishing up some home improvements or did you get to jump straight to the decorating? Let me know in the comments.