Aged Brick Fireplace

I've been in a flurry of activity on my days off lately...  and I must say that blogging has inspired and encouraged me to finish things on my to do list!

I was hanging on to this for a future blog post but was perusing my favorite blogs this morning and came across a post on Pure Style Home about this very subject.  If you're as addicted to design blogs as I am you most certainly know about Lauren Liess at Pure Style Home.  Her Mad Hatter Chair and fabric line are gorgeous!

I just love her natural, organic rooms that somehow have a touch of rustic glam and industrial chic!

If, per chance,  you haven't seen her room from the D.C. Design House you must go see it now! HERE!

Anyway, just so I could pipe in, I thought I'd share my experience with whitewashing brick.  As you can see I have a giant, DID I SAY BIG HONKIN' GIANT, fireplace.  It's kind of crazy and takes up the entire wall.  I have been working to improve this fireplace since forever.

Here's the before, before....

First I ditched all the fake ivy!  Yay!  and, built a new mantel all by myself!  Yay! 

This is the brick prior to my very light whitewash.

This is the after.   I know it's almost imperceptible but it does make a nice difference in person.   If you scroll between the two pictures you can see where I lightened the bricks.   In fact I plan on doing even more lightening and highlighting when the moment strikes me again. 

I started by taking some Martha Stewart Heavy Cream diluted with water.  It was very watery.  As it turns out the whiter, lighter paint (I tried a few) was too light with the tones in the brick.   I decided to go with the more golden, brown, camel tones in the brick and happened to have an oops sample from Home Depot. 

You can see here that I started on the left side with the whiter tones (too white for me) 

 Then, I transitioned to the more camel tones.  I even threw in a bit of grey here and there.

I just grabbed my kitchen sponge (I know, yuk!) and started splotching and dabbing the paint onto the brick to highlight it.  I thinned the paint a bit with water but not too thin.  Like pancake batter.  Then, just to be authentic (Grout has lime in it), I threw in a bit of unsanded grout that I had hanging around.   

As i said, almost imperceptible, but it really did make a big difference.  It has a more character.  I'm definitely going to lighten it a bit more!

Just looking at the pictures I can see a few spots that need a bit more highlighting.

Anyway, as I said I'd been thinking about this for a long, long time and have collected a bunch of brick pictures for inspiration in my pinterest


and, I also remembered that I had this book!

 There's a great recipe for painting bricks.  The recipe Kathryn uses is more layered with mauve paint as the base coat with highlights of grey, white, and more mauve.  This would be a great option for someone who doesn't have a good base to start with. 

Junk Chic is still available on Amazon      It has many great decorative paint finishes and I've referred to it quite often.

My best advice to anyone living with ugly brick is to be fearless!!  Get up, grab your brush, put on your favorite song, don't take a shower, wear messy clothes and Go for it!