White Wash Brick Fireplace Makeover

Decided to breakdown and try a paint wash on the fireplace brick. The brick has a vintage/rustic feel to it.. like the used reclaimed brick, and the mantel was bespoke made local. Here is a "before" photo, it shows the fireplace insert before I gave it a paint makeover. You can see that HERE.

The orange finish on the fur mantel combined with the dirty brownness of the brick was not doing much for me. I had to think long and hard about putting paint on the brick, as you really can't go back once it is done. I decided to use some of my Country Chic chalk paint in "French Linen" It's a very light gray.. I diluted it to about 40/60 paint and water. Chalk paint dries fast, and I wanted it to go on light.

I painted the wash on with a regular paint brush, then used  an old damp towel to blot the excess off. Work in sections and if you take too much off, just put more on and dab again.


Now you can really see some progress.. all that is left is the right side, and the bottom hearth. It really brightend up the brick, but it still looks like brick.

The last step was to put on a few coats of glossy trim paint on the mantel.. and it sure looks like a different fireplace. The gray cast to the brick has more of a "stone" look. You can still see some of the rustic tones of the brick though it.

The room feels lighter and brighter already with just this small change. 

Chalk Painted Wooden Trunk

My husband has a wooden trunk his dad built for him to take all his gear to scout camp. It has lived in various ways around our homes and for awhile lived in the garage. Here I needed a table for our living room and decided to try it out. It seems to fit the space fairly well and is actually tall enough to serve as a table.

It's stained wood with brass latches, 

and silver metal handles. 

It was kinda a chilly morning, good day to light a fire and get to work. 

First step was two coats of Anne Sloan Olive. Yep, the same color as my Union Jack dresser behind. 

I could have stopped there, but I didn't want this piece to be the same as the dresser.

So I got out a can of Country Chic paint that I had used on my dining room table and slathered some on. This part was just slopping some white over the olive, I'm going to rub it in, so no need to be as careful.

Messy looking, right? 

Then comes the next step, getting an old towel and getting it damp. Be sure to squeeze out the excess, you don't want it dripping wet. I fold the towel and wipe lightly back and forth, pressing down harder in the areas I want more wear. I use a couple fingers wrapped in the towel to really rub across the wood trim, distressing those areas down until a bit of wood shows. 

Difference between the white washed side, and just the olive.

This side slopped with paint. I painted the hardware too.. they didn't match anyhow. I can always rub some off after.

I worked in sections, paint a side, then wipe-wipe-wipe. I folded and refolded the towel to expose clean damp sides and wiped against the grain of the wood first and then with the grain to smooth. 

After wet distressing.

Now most sane people would stop there... but I wanted a touch of a third color. I had a can of this Anne Sloan from another project. I rinsed my towel and grabbed a dry paint brush.

Using the brush to dab a bit of blue on my damp towel. I then rubbed a bit of blue on the corners and trim and here and there on the surfaces, not all over. My thought was, If this is an old shipping trunk, it would have paint transfer from rubbing on other trunks in the cargo hold. So why not add a bit of rubbed color on areas that would have been touching?

Corners and edges are good places for this. After I used a clean side of my towel and rubbed it into the other colors. 

I also rubbed on the hardware so the metal shines through a bit.

The next step is wax.

 I decided to use the Country Chic Natural Wax. It looks like a tiny container...but you just rub the brush around on the top, brush across the wood and it actually goes on very thin. You can just see a slight shine to the areas you wax. I then use a scrap of flannel to buff. I waxed the dining room set and this trunk and have just a slight indention on the wax. 

And here it is, all done and back in it's place. I changed up the decor on top. Going with a wood bowl of pumpkins, a white milk bottle with some hydrangeas from the yard and a candle. 

Before and After

Linking up to:

Miss Mustard Seed

Laundry Room Makeover: Done In One Day and Using What We Have

My laundry room is the least favorite room in the house. It's small, dark and right off the living room. It's also the pass through to the garage so it ends up being a drop zone, it's too small for a drop zone. Then there was the paint... it was blue, like a bright blue with royal blue trim. 

The room needed help bad. 

It had that "this is a random room in an old factory" look. Complete with fire extinguisher... 

The wood cabinets are boring and the one on the side wall bugs me.. it's like just in an awkward spot. We are not redoing them right now, they will have to do and we need the storage bad. There is no floor space for a different type of storage. 

The worst part is how exposed this room is to the living room. There is a door.. but with my boys running their dirty clothes in there and accessing the dog food, the door is always open. So when you sit on the sofa, this is the view. 

Not so inspiring, is it?

We have plans to do some renovating the garage area in a while and it will have a new mud room/laundry, so while the room needed a makeover, it needed to be done in a thrifty way. Why spend money when this room would be overhauled in the future? So my plan is to makeover using only things I ALREADY HAVE. I know, crazy right?  I have some partial cans of paint in the garage from repainting the main rooms and a can of old trim paint. I also have tons of decor around that could be put to use.

What to do with the cabinets? Paint.. if they didn't have flat fronts I might have considered it. They would look pretty boring with large expanses of white and no texture. I opted to take the doors off the big ones over the machines. Should I go with open shelves and pretty baskets? Sorry, I'm just too unorganized for that look. I went through my stack of Goodwill shower curtains and picked out a the Target bird one. I cut the shower curtain in half width wise. After hemming the raw edges and creating a pocket for the rod, I grabbed a couple of extension rods the old home owners left behind and hung one curtain at the top of the cabinet, Leaving the bottom area exposed for easy access to laundry soap and a place to display decor. The other half went below the cabinet to hid the hoses and electric cords. I didn't put it against the wall, it's actually about 5 inches forward. This gives breathing room behind for the equipment. 

After paint and a bit of reorganizing... this is how it turned out. 

I decided to keep the vintage towel rods.. they make great indoor clothes lines. I added a few clothes pins. It also fits my vintage washboard. 

The open space in the cabinet gives a shelf feel and makes a good area for decor, and easy access to my soap. (I need more dry detergent, but I currently have a kiddo home with a cold. So no store outings for the next couple days.)

I added a simple folded cotton rug I already had to the top of the dryer. It makes a soft space to put a laundry basking and keeps it from making noises while the machine is running. 

Remember that wall with the fire extinguisher? It now has a nice gilt mirror that is perfect for quick glance at ones hair and makeup before heading out to the garage and car. The flat boring door to the garage is dressed up with a chalk painted metal wall hanging. The white paint is a huge improvement.

Now this is the view from the living room. It's not perfect, it's not super glamorous.. but it's a huge improvement and best of all, I spent no money on it. Everything was stuff from around the house, things we already had. 

So here they are side by side. 

So much better. 

Chalk Painted Windsor Dining Room Table and Chairs

Our house has a dining space between the kitchen and living room. Basically the breakfast nook, though right now it's our only dining space. We had a formal dining room in our previous home, and it was used for meals probably once a year. This home also has a room intended as a formal dining, it's a pretty nice room with good windows. But as we downsized homes, I needed a space for my sewing room and office. So for now, our breakfast nook is our dining room, and homework hub. Our dining furniture is around 10 years old, we bought it before kids. It's seen quite a bit of abuse from them, there are marker stains and some dings and gouges, and frankly I'm just ready to have a new look.


 In my quest to lighten and brighten this house in the woods, I decided to simply paint it white. I did consider more Duck Egg or even Provence. However I needed to actually pick up some paint for this project, not having enough on hand. I ended up buying a new brand of Chalk paint to try out.

Country Chic chalk paint. They have a ton of really cute colors.. including a more "pink" pink (Annie Sloan has a more salmon pink) They also do seasonal "limited edition" colors. They tend to run about $10 cheaper a can, locally, than AS paint. They are made in Canada.

I started with my chairs. I painted two in one day. I wiped down the chairs and scrubbed off any sticky bits. I didn't sand or prep. I usually don't with AS, and I wanted to see how this paint would preform. I found that I had to wait a bit longer between coats with this paint. It has a different feel, it's a bit thinner and kind of slippery. I ended up putting on three coats to get a sold covering, however the paint has a much smoother feel and look than AS. You could almost go without sanding if like. I wanted to distress a bit to allow some black through.. this is were there is a big difference between this paint and AS. I usually lightly sand AS before wax, and it turns to powder and distresses easy with a sanding block. I tried the same on this paint and I really had to put elbow grease into it to get it to show any black at all. So the You Tube tutorials say to use a wet cloth.. well I wet a cloth and the strangest thing about this paint is when you get it wet it kind of turns back into paint... so it kinda jells up after wetting but still wasn't easy to just rub off. I ended up wetting my foam sanding block and then scrubbing quite hard.. it would distress...but it was hard to predict how it would react. Some places I hardly wet and I would get a mass of paint removed, others I scrubbed forever and hardly any came off. In the end I actually ended up with a very "chippy" look. It looks good...however I usually go for more of a "rubbed" effect. 

Here is a painted -vs- unpainted shot.

I decided to leave the cherry top and seats, for now. The wood color compliments the kitchen.

I't took me two days for the chairs. I would do one set a day. I wanted to make sure they were ready to go by the time the kids got home and needed to use them. I put two coats on the table the first day and a another coat the second day and then used the Country Chic wax to protect the paint. I'm a bit worried on how they will hold up around food and drinks, being that they re-liquefy when wet... but hopefully the wax will be a good hardener. The wax, by the way, is natural and non-petrol based. It has no smell at all and though it's a solid, you rub your brush around on it... then work it into the wood. You can see it go on with a nice sheen and I buffed with a bit of scrap flannel. It feels silky smooth.

Here it is all finished. I do love the white in this space, much more cheery and happy.

Linking up to:

The Cottage Market
Miss Mustard Seed

A Simple Fireplace Makeover

Our house has a nice propane fireplace insert that was installed sometime in the early 90's. It is actually not bad looking, it doesn't have the clunky brass surrounds with tiny windows as we saw in a few other homes. It has a nice big glass and fairly realistic looking logs. I REALLY did not care for the surround color. It's was bright brick red...

The surround felt really pieced together.. It also showed that it was not quite the same size on one side vs the other. And though the red was probably designed to go with brick. It didn't match the brick we have.. So I picked up a few supplies.

1. A drop cloth... I used this to protect my driveway from overspray.
2. Painter's tape. I used just a bit to cover the switch.. I didn't want to try taking it off, it was on pretty tight.
3. High Heat black spray paint. Designed for BBQ's and other metals exposed to heat, it's very important to use this type on fireplace projects.

I got out a few tools and started carefully taking apart the surround.

I carefully unplugged the wires from the corner switch and used tape to keep track of what went to what connector. They were not marked in any way and I didn't want to reverse them.

I took the metal panels out to the driveway and gave them a couple coats of paint. Let dry and then put it all back together.. the result...I much cleaner look for the fireplace. It's much more neutral and compliments the decor. It also hides any issues with being square with the insert.

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