Nine Red: Fireplace

Thursday, October 3, 2013

River Rock Fireplace

While the kitchen has been hogging up all my brain time, string art & the rest of my life have put the progress at a standstill. The weather has suddenly decided that yes, fall is actually here, and it's getting chilly! So other projects have taken precedence, like gutter cleaning, wall building (ugh!), and heater buying (totally caved...). So today I want to share a quick update we gave our fireplace recently. This is a really easy, non-permanent update you can do in a weekend, and I haven't really seen it anywhere else. Perfect for renters!

When we white-washed the fireplace I mentioned this idea, and finally one Sunday afternoon we just went for it. When I say it's easy, I mean.. really easy. The hardest part is rinsing the rocks. Which, was easy. Rocks, being naturally non-flammable, should hold up to the heat that the stove gives off. The bricks around the stove are never really HOT in the winter, so I'm not worried. The rocks don't go UNDER.... just around.

Here's how easily you can throw this together, you need:

Rocks. Your choice of style. We chose Mexican river pebbles.
Wood, for the border. We used 1" x 4"
Stain & Poly (or use the Vinegar & Tea recipe)
Miter saw, or miter box, to cut 45 degree angles.

We started with our stove sitting in this brick area, which, if you look closely, is pretty beat up...

The front right corner there. Seems the last owner chopped wood (and missed..) non stop on that area, and has totally broken up the bricks. Replacement at this time wasn't in the forecast, so covering it was the next best thing. First, a border had to be placed, since we didn't want stones all over the carpet.

Whoah, blurry photo! Ah well, you know how it goes. All we did here was measure the area, mark that on one side of the wood, and cut at 45 degrees inward (meaning, the measurement will be on the LONG side), and set it in place. The fit was perfect, and didn't need any securing. If yours does, I suggest a little super strength double sided tape. That should hold it still.

Meanwhile, we washed our rocks by putting a few hand fulls in a bucket full of water, and placing them on towels in the sun after. That took forever, but was necessary. Look at our clever way of bringing them in, it's like a little hammock!

So that's it really, you just start spreading your rocks around. Super complicated, huh? I know...

A large part of me wanted to stray from the original plan to stain the border, and keep it natural. But being on the floor, I figured it's better to have some protection on it. (side note, anyone know how to fix that ever growing crack in the ceiling? It's like, the drywall tape or something...) Here's the stain:

Much better! I did the Tea & Vinegar stain technique from the antique crate post, I just love that trick. Then I coated in a semi-gloss Minwax Polycrylic, one of my favorites.

I cleaned the glass, but the inside was pretty dirty, and now in plain view. So for the summer I just adhered a little wrapping paper in there, which, of course, will NOT be there once we start using this bad boy. (duh!) You probably noticed the back isn't filled in with stones. Yep - we didn't listen to the guy at the store when he recommended an amount for this size area, and we had to go back. Boo....

But you get the idea. Isn't that neat? I've always loved rocks, especially river rocks. Just another way to bring the outdoors in, and add a little texture in here. It actually feels really good to walk across these, like a little massage.. ahh....

All done! Just for fun here's what we started with, less than a year ago, before the whitewash:

Yea, so nothing terribly tricky, or tutorial worthy... pretty much just cut a frame, popped it in & filled it up. When winter comes (right around the friggin corner!) I am thinking of putting one round concrete stepping stone near the door (on the right side) so I can split kindling. Something the last owner did NOT think of.

That's about it...

What do you think? Before you say it - someone already asked "how on earth will you clean that?!" and someone else suggested using the vacuum with the brush attachment. Problem solved! Perfect too, because I had NOT even thought about cleaning. Thanks guys!

Enjoy your day, get something pumpkin-ey, because it's October, so everything is pumpkin. Shouldn't be hard. Seriously, yesterday I saw pumpkin bagels... who knew?

-Jesse

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How To: White-Wash the Fireplace

Roughly 1 million years ago I asked all of you for your opinion on whether or not we should whitewash the fireplace. The results were pretty mixed but a lot of you leaned with us towards whitewashing - so one brave evening, we took to it. It was SO much easier than I expected!

So much brighter! We aren't completely done with our front deck yet, but it turns out both Ralph & I prefer to balance too many projects at once - and we started in on the living room. The fireplace was the perfect kickstart we needed to get to work. Here's a side by side so you can really see the difference:

If you think you can't do this, you're wrong. It was simple! I took a few process shots to share.

The process is simple. Take diluted paint, and one person brushes it on, while the other follows behind with a rag to remove the excess. I thought we would have to be really fast about this, but to my surprise - the paint was really forgiving. In fact, we had to let it soak a little longer on the brick to get the white we really wanted.

Pretty straightforward - dust & clean your fireplace as best you can. If you want some more darker bricks to show through later, this is the time to paint some of them black, or brown, or deep red or whatever.

We skipped that step, as we already had some dirty bricks. Then, mix up your whitewash. This is a simple half & half mix: 50% Water, 50% white latex paint.

Yum!

Then you get to work! Brush a small area on, then wipe it off. You can always repeat if it's not as white as you'd like.

We started with the mantle first to get the hang of it, but I guess it would have been smarter to start somewhere LESS visible. Luckily it came out fine, but you can see we wanted it a little lighter than this:

So we started leaving it on longer, and got this:

We found that wiping less vigorously helped too - gently removing the excess paint vs. scrubbing the bricks to death worked way better.

Stand back, take a look:

And just keep going. We did this in about an hour.

We chose not to tape because we figured we could be careful enough (and we were!) and we also had planned to paint the wall behind it another color someday (Update, we painted! Click here to see), to really make the fireplace pop. (again, click here to see!) And finished:

It dried so fast we were able to start playing decorator, and decided that our mantle needed a mirror, even if it's sliced in half by that chimney. Can't really fix that, but I love the extra light the mirror brings!

So refreshing! We also have another crazy idea for this area, not sure if it will work... we want to get grey river stones, medium to large size, and cover the brick area around the stove. We'll put a wood border, and just let the rocks be loose. I think it will bring a modern touch. Have you ever seen anything like that before? I've been looking all over for tips (or warnings!) about doing that, but we might be on our own....**UPDATE** 10/3/13, we did it - we added river rock to the fireplace, and it's great!

Well I guess it's Monday again, back to work, huh? Have a great day & a productive week ahead!

-Jesse

P.S. Here's a sneak peak of the fireplace with our new wall, click here to go read more about it: