Fireplace

One of the last projects remaining in the house was the fire place area. This was another part of the renovation which we decided to do on our own in order to save some bucks.

At this point we were scratching our heads with what to do with this wall...

We had an existing fireplace which was complimented with the surrounding room's wonderful particle board paneling. Of course all the paneling came down during the renovation and we found that the entire wall was made of brick. Sweet.

There was also a large iron box - which we gifted to our masonry guy (for doing such an awesome job with our brickwork). The other funny thing was that someone glued fake bricks around the fire place... over real bricks! Thats what all the black stuff was around the fire place. This forced me to have to cover up this area with some other type of tile or material.

This build was pretty straight forward. We decided to seal the brick with a soft white paint, stick some black slate around the fireplace, and get a nice modern fireplace door. Here is what we did in order:

1. Clean all debris from the existing bricks (glue, mortar chunks, etc).
2. Used Great Stuff between the brick and drywall to seal up any voids. Used white silicon to seal over this. I also filled any holes and cracks in the bricks with this (the brick wall was in rough shape).
3. Prime the brick with Zinsser 123 Primer (awesome stuff). Do a light coat then a heavier coat.  
4. Mixed grey mortar and slapped on some black slate tiles. To get the tiles to stick on the wall over the actual fireplace opening, I created a 2x4 frame so that the tiles would not slide off the wall while the mortar set. 
5. Grouted and sealed the tile.
6. Order a fireplace door online and installed this when it came. I would recommend ordering this before tiling so that the tiles can be laid (if necessary) to the exact dimensions of the door. Ours was an inch off so that required that I lay tile 1 inch inside the actual opening. 
7. Cut trim for the floor and glued in with liquid nails to the brick. Silicon'ed that too.
8. Taped up the tile/fireplace and painted the primed brick with a flat white color (slight grayish tint). 
9. Installed a shelf from IKEA to serve as a mantle. 

Check out the final product. (still needs some decorating - a little plain now).

Final Product

Hi Juno! 

Hanging out with some friends and drinking beers around the fireplace.

We lit some logs for the first time last night while hanging out with our good friends. It was awesome... warmth, light and that log fire smell permeated through our house while we enjoyed some drinks. CHEERS!