distressed brick fireplace

I love the textural organic rustic feel of brick…and big statement brick fireplaces, like the huge 14’ x 10’ mid-century modern fireplace in my living-room…but I don’t love how the dark brick color sucks all the lightness out of the room.  You know how much I love light, airy spaces!
To lighten up our brick fireplace while keeping its beautiful textural feel, I needed a solution….so many options…
…white painted brick; whitewash…kind of hard to keep from looking a bit pinky; and oh so many complete overhaul options involving sooooo much work….cement facade, tiling, drywall…
…Hmmmm…

I finally settled for my ‘tried and true’ plaster finish which I’ve used before and still love it.  It has the look of mortar-washed or limed brick (there is a proper name for this technique…anyone know what it is??) or of brick that has been exposed after having the plaster chipped away.

I love that beautiful texture and distressed feel.

…as usual, the project isn’t quite complete, I now need to finish the actual fire-pit area…perhaps surrounded with a soft grey stone edging?

Plastering all the brick took a bit of time – it’s a huge surface (although, likely less than 5 hours) – and was a bit tedious to fill the mortar line and work with the odd lines caused by the roughness of the brick against the trowel (I actually use drywall compound, instead of plaster – as I always have lots around and am, unfortunately, very familiar with working with it).

I experimented with various techniques: a paint roller with thinned compound, which worked ok but was quite messy and still required additional filling in the mortar lines; using a ‘icing-like’ bag to squeeze the plaster into the mortar lines (filling a zip-lock bag with plaster and squeezing it out through a cut corner). All these were quite tedious and ineffective so I finally settled on simply troweling, as I do with dry-walling.

this side of the fireplace has a grey-paint foundation so the plaster-finish is more uniform and subtle

I troweled a single coat with various thicknesses, leaving some areas of the brick exposed (but filling the mortar spaces to better emulate plaster that has been chipped away rather than applied). I also slightly varied the color of the plaster by adding a bit of latex paint to the compound – a couple of cups to half a 5 gallon bucket – the paint added a bit of hardness to the plaster finish. A touch of the brick color also bleeds through the plaster adding to the soft color variations.

my first plaster-finished fireplace in our previous home…still my ‘go-to’ solution to lighten up the brickthe reverse side of the fireplace…how am I so lucky to have had two homes with 360 degree fireplaces!

The kids helped apply the plaster…they were really eager to join in when they saw me using the icing bag to squeeze the plaster into the mortar lines, but the
novelty wore off pretty quickly for them too!
In some areas I brushed on a polyurethane coat to protect the soft compound from dirt and smudges – I use glaze for the plaster-finished on my walls, which would also work well for the brick – but I’m not convinced this step is necessary as marks easily rub off the thick plaster.  This is a distressed look that accommodates mars and is easily rubbed down to correct the few marks that stand out – a perfect finish to keep life easy and beautiful.

have a beautiful week!

xo

shelley