Fireplace Refresh at the Flip House

A Fireplace Refresh

From the very start of the Flip House, I wanted to get my hands on the fireplace.  It needed lots of love and would need a complete overhaul to refresh it.  The brick didn’t match the exterior of the house and the mantle was a little sad.  The insert was also falling out. After opening up the wall between the living and family rooms, the fireplace became even more of a focal point of the room.  It needed help in a major way!  In case you missed the before post of the family room, you can take a look here.  I really wanted to play up the fireplace and make it flow with the rest of the house.  I decided to paint the brick and enhance the details of the mantle.  What did I do to make the fireplace pop you might ask?

Well first off I hunted down some corbels to enhance the mantle and beef it up a little.  These are vintage cedar corbels out of a house that was torn down on St. Simons Island, GA.  A little cool feature to really make a statement and repurpose too.  Next up was to add trim to make the mantle more substantial since it was a little dinky.  

This is the mantle during the process.  The old door was moved around and landed there while we were working on the floors.  The door found a new home in another flip house in town (not one of ours).  We are so glad it found a good home.  

The mantle, trim and corbels got a fresh coat of paint (Sherwin Williams Web Gray) and received a black glaze to top it off.

Here is the right side.  The brick got a fresh coat of light gray brick paint.  I did a wash technique over the top of it to give it a little depth.

And now for the final reveal!

Sorry the picture is a little dark but I think you can get the full effect.  The inside of the fireplace got a fresh coat of black high heat paint and now looks all dolled up.  What do you think about the fireplace?  Quite an improvement huh?