Giving Our Fireplace a Colorful Budget Makeover

One day, I will demo and rebuild this whole fireplace, but until then… I decided it was time for a colorful big impact makeover.

Story time: We love having a fireplace, but this one is just plain ugly. Here’s how it looked when we first moved in… cheap dated tile and, not that you can tell from photos, it’s not even built right. The dimensions of the firebox are too small for the opening of the fireplace which results in those smoke stains on the mantel (and against the ceiling). I’d love to rip the whole thing apart and rebuild with cute tiles, a better mantel and maybe even some built-ins on either side, but that’s a MAJOR project and sometimes I’m just not in the mood. So this is a painters special, but took a few hours and is SUCH an improvement.

The first thing I did years ago when we moved in was paint over that ugly tile. You can read how I did that in this post here.

At some point, this whole room got painted and I decided to add wallpaper to the skinny little bump out over the fireplace. Because it’s a raised hearth, mounting a TV over the fireplace is way too high so this area is always a little tricky. It’s solid concrete so nailing into it is nearly impossible so anything I displace needs to be resting on the mantel.

Next I got a campaign to rework this room so I replaced the wallpaper. This is such a small area that it takes maybe 2 rolls of removable paper so I’m not necessarily looking to replace this every year, it’s a pretty great way to change of the space!

Which brings me to the ultimate makeover today. The black hearth isn’t ideal, but it’s neutral and fine. I used high heat paint and give it a touch up every season if there are any scratches or scrapes. The black tiles around the firebox can sometimes feel like one large black abyss so I wanted to figure out something for that. I couldn’t go crazy with color because I wanted to use the same high heat paint here and that only comes in basic colors… but, the square tiles were screaming for a pattern. Hello, checkerboard.

You can see how badly stained the mantel itself was so rather than fight the stain each season, I decided to bring in a bright bold color to possible mask the staining a bit and… just bring in a punch of energy to this small dark room. After scrubbing and priming the mantel, I used my favorite BEHR’s Jet Ski that I also used on the TV easel in the corner.

I ended up painting the mantel when the kids went to bed so I was watching TV and forgot to film but close your eyes and picture me painting. This is a reminder of how I started with this makeover: stained mantel, big black void around the fireplace, nothing too exciting about this view.

And here’s where we are now! For one can of paint and an evening of work, this fireplace has a point of view!

And that’s our sweet Frank who’s favorite perch was right where you see him below. We adopted him when Eleanor was just 5 months old and picked him up at a rest stop in New York after his ride up from Arkansas where he was rescued. He passed away peacefully this spring at the age of 15 and this fireplace makes me think of him!