For the last two months of COVID-19 I’ve had “paint the inside of fireplace” on my weekend DIY to-do list. Then, this weekend I had a slight tweak in my back on Saturday morning and decided to take the day off. Instead, I checked off painting the inside of our fireplace off my list!
Before
Our fireplace in the formal living room is original to the house. It’s inoperable, so we’ve just “decorated” it with some birch logs. The brick is in ok condition- I’d love to retile it– and the mantle is fine. The inside of the fireplace was looking pretty dirty.
Since we won’t be using it, I wasn’t about to research and buy some fire safe paint. Instead, I grabbed the can of Benjamin Moore Onyx paint that I used for the interior doors. I’m sure it’s not the right paint for bricks inside of fireplaces, but I wanted it done, not perfect. 😛
That day it was 90+ degrees and at one point my back started to give me grief. I re-adjusted and thought to myself, this isn’t a good set-up. Within a few minutes, I tipped the paint can over. Thankfully most of it went onto the towel and only a little on the tile. (Did I mention I want to retile?)
The first coat looked more like dark navy than black. I didn’t paint the metal ash pit door. The paint wasn’t meant for bricks, but it REALLY wasn’t meant for metal.
After two coats, it no longer looked like navy. I let it dry for a few hours and put the birch logs back in. You can’t even see the metal door.
After
And from further back, it looks so much better! It’s one of those slightly tedious DIY projects, like touching up paint, that you easily put off. Once you do it though, you think “why did I wait so long?”
