This fireplace has been a thorn in my side for quite some time and I’ve wanted to redo it for so long. But based on its location and how it was built, it meant it was going to be a larger and more costly project than I was prepared to take on so I let it sit and fester, ugly and glaring for a long time.

Until this Christmas season, I could not take it any longer and decided to myself in the middle and do a refresh, one that was more cost-effective and would at least make the space look much more visually appealing.

The big elephant in the room is the non-mantle mantle. There is a nonsensical black “board” that was placed there as a sort of a mantle that I detest and I have not yet removed it. The issue is the bump out that’s attached to the wall that is underneath the board, which prevents building out a real mantle. I will be removing them both but it is significantly more involved, it is coming but it will not be happening in this project **sobs**. Lol Moving on.

So what could I do as a quick weekend project to update my fireplace area so it’s not such an eyesore in the meantime? Let’s touch up the inside brick color, and change the old outdated white tiles and the icky tiling on the floor.

My fireplace has the gas option but we usually just burn wood in it. The only issue with that is that it gets gross on the inside so it was in desperate need of a touchup. So after cleaning it out, I repainted the inside brick walls with a black high-heat paint that’s made for high temperatures.

When it comes to the white tiles *barf* I really wanted to remove it all but this was supposed to be an affordable and quick weekend project. I still wanted tiles that had texture and dimension. I was able to find tiles that were made from a natural stone and had lots of texture, in a peel-and-stick option. I was so thrilled. 

These tiles are peel-and-stick but they are made from stone (though they are very thin pieces themselves and not thick stone) and they are safe to go on the outside of the fireplace. (These are not rated for direct heat inside of a fireplace and you should always do your own research before use in your specific environment).

I installed the tile and though it was a lovely dark grey with lots of variation it wasn’t quite as dark as I wanted.

So what I ended up doing was going over the tile, once I finished installing it, with a deep grey almost black paint wash.