The Pear Tree Cottage: Cloud White

Do you have a fireplace that is an outdated eyesore? Here is how we updated ours without removing a single brick.

Before

Before (realtor pic from our initial house walk through)

This project is a good alternative for those of you that desire to give your outdated fireplace a new look without all the mess that tearing it down brick by brick would create. My husband and I had never done a project like this before and neither one of us had any carpentry experience so if we were able to do it anyone can!

This post by The Lettered Cottage started the ideas swirling in my head. I drew some pictures and haphazardly :o) covered part of the fireplace with white cardboard so that my husband could kinda see what I wanted it to look like.

We ended up using..

about 10 furring strips
6' of Crown molding
6' of 3"x1" mdf
5' of 1"x 4" wood
liquid nails
6 concrete anchors
two 4' x 8' x 1/4 inch plywood luan (luan wood is a mid grade mahogany plywood)
lots of caulk
a bit of wood filler
a jig saw
a few carpenter clamps
primer
paint
and a drill
We began by attaching the furring strips to the brick facade with liquid nails (the painters tape was used to secure them to the brick while the adhesive dried)

Hubby also drilled two concrete anchors (pictured below) into the first and last of the furring strips for extra support.

While the adhesive dried hubby used the jigsaw to cut the 1/4 inch plywood luan facade that would be nailed onto the furring strips.

The facade he cut out was carefully nailed directly onto the furring strips.

The original fireplace mantle was made out of three sizes of pink brick that were stacked up on top of each other. It was a pretty horrible sight...

Creating a mantle without chiseling off the protruding brick shelf took lots of effort and I am very proud of hubby for doing such an amazing job. He started by attaching a 1"x 4" piece of wood to the bottom layer of mantel shelf bricks with two concrete anchors. He then attached a piece of crown molding to the second layer of mantle shelf bricks. Lastly he attached a 3"x11" piece of mdf to the crown molding to cover the top layer of mantle shelf bricks. The mantle that hubby ended up creating is very beautiful and was so inexpensive to make. Bingo!

Hubby cut leftover pieces of wood into wedge shapes and used them to secure the crown molding to the mantel shelf brick. Hopefully the pictures below will help you better understand how it was all accomplished.:)

After the mantle was done we attached furring strips to the top half of the fireplace brick just like we had done to the bottom half. We cut the 1/4" inch wood luan and nailed it onto the furring strips.

I then used wood filler on all the nail holes and caulking on all the edges. I coated everything (except the inside of the firebox!) with Olympic's zero voc primer which provided fabulous coverage. I painted the area around the fireplace box with Olympics Flat latex Zero Voc paint in Black Magic and the rest of the fireplace in Cloud White (flat latex) a Benjamin Moore color.

Before (on the day we moved in)

After

The inside of the firebox will be painted with black, heat resistant paint sometime before winter arrives :). You can find two more of our makeovers here and here. Please feel free to ask me any questions in the comments section and I will do my best to answer them.

Party Time! Please visit the following blogs for lots of inspiration