Painting Brick Fireplace

runninggal81 · July 2012

I am considering painting my brick fireplace white to give it a more modern look. Has anyone done this before? I'd love any tips/lessons learned.

Pitterbull · July 2012

google this one a lot before making your final decision. Make sure the bricks are clean and dry and be prepared to use a lot of paint since it will really soak in.

Check out this link for staining the brick: http://retrorenovation.com/2012/03/27/instead-of-cleaning-or-painting-brick-stain-your-brick-fireplace-with-concrete-stain/

It looks more modern and unlike paint it won't chip after a while.

baconface · July 2012

We did this and are so glad we did. You do definitely want to be sure you want to, but the brick on our fireplace was just so old and dated-looking and just wasn't pretty brick. It is also a small-ish room and I just knew that painting it white would look cute and brighten it up. It did!

But man, it was a chore. I think it took 2-3 coats of primer, and 1-2 coats of paint. (The paint was really only a shade or two off from the primer.) I can't remember what we actually ended up using as primer, but I remember reading a lot online and talking to the guys in Lowe's and they were helpful.

Brick drinks paint. You will wonder where it is all going.

dejavu · July 2012

we did this and I love it. as PP said, brick takes a lot of paint. I think we used Zinser 123 primer.

lil_jen051708 · July 2012

We did this last year and it wasn't as time consuming as the others posted. I used a masonry roller (much thicker and softer than regular wall rollers). I used 1 coat of killz primer rolled on and then used a brush to get into some places I missed and the grout lines. Then I used another masonry roller to roll on the paint- we did an off white/cream. It took one coat of each. The roller gets really heavy but it was super easy.