Howsed- DIY Home Improvement Blog

Updating the Fireplace

Posted by Wayne

The one thing I hated about our house when we were looking at buying it was the fireplace. Huge brown beams from floor to ceiling (one was twisted and warped), ugly brick, brown mantle….. just plain nasty and 1970’s. I knew that it would have to be the first thing to go, but it was an imposing task. I didn’t know what I’d find behind the brick or how easy the beams or brick would come down.

What I was particularly worried about was that all of the walls in the house have the orange-peel texture finish, and I wondered if the builders had sprayed the texture on the walls before (under the brick) or after (not under the brick) finishing the fireplace. If the wall underneath didn’t have texture it was going to be a nightmare getting it to match the rest of the wall.

One day a couple of months after we had moved in and gotten settled, my wife was at work (I was self-employed at the time) and I decided I was sick of looking at that monstrosity so I decided to go for it. The beams came out fairly easy. I just had to be careful not to pry against the good drywall.

The brick also came down easy enough. It was really just a 1″ thick brick veneer that appeared to have been cemented onto a wire mesh that had been nailed to the wall. It created an awful mess tearing that down and I think if my wife had walked in a that point she would have been extremely pissed. Little by little I chipped the bricks off and tore down the mesh and learned if my concerns had been warranted.The good news was that they had textured the wall underneath the brick. The bad news was that they evidently didn’t think that brick was ever coming down (or more likely didn’t give a shit as construction workers are inclined to do) because the wall was full of hammer dents. Maybe the guy who put up the mesh just had bad aim because each of the 20 or so roofing nails that held up the wire mesh was surrounded by evidence of hammer blows that missed the mark.

To fix the dents I filled them in with joint compound (drywall mud) and dabbed them with a real sponge to give it the random texture of the surrounding orange peel texture. Once they dried I went over them again with a wet drywall sponge to knock off the sharp points. The result of this was actually nearly perfect and you can’t see these spots today.

Finding a replacement mantel was really not an easy task. Everywhere you look online they seem to be very expensive and I couldn’t find anybody in town that carried what I was looking for or that seemed to know anything about them. I was elated to end up finding one at Home Depot, and it was kind of like a build-your-own mantel type deal. You buy the base unit, and then you can jazz it up a little bit with extra pieces. This turned out to be exactly what we were looking for. I cut it down to the width of the existing hearth, painted it, and it went up on the wall with only minor headaches.

We debated trying to find a replacement face to the gas fireplace because it was gold and my wife wanted black, so we decided to invest in a $5 can of black spray paint first to see if that would work for us, and if not then we’d begin the search for a new one. We took it off and masked the glass and handles and painted it. It ended up looking better than I could have hoped and we were able to save a lot of effort and money by not trying to find a new one. While I had the face off the fireplace I removed and washed the fake logs, vacuumed and wiped everything out, and replaced the fake ember material that goes underneath before replacing the logs.

I also tiled the area between the mantle and the fireplace with 2″x2″ travertine tiles. I had never tiled a vertical surface so my brother was kind enough to help and we got that done in one night. This also turned out very nice. After some paint to the room, it looked very sharp and was a huge improvement from the 1970’s brick nastiness. You’ll also be happy to know that the purple drapes have long since been replaced.

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