Show me your fireplace - update in comments

[fryjack2]

janegold My favorite part of your picture is the wine glass in hand

@sameoldstory I can't tell how big that fireplace is in relation to the room. I would be tempted to extend the brick all the way up to the ceiling and about a foot more on either side. I would add a new mantel like what TR has.

I can't post a pic but we have 2 gas fireplaces. The one in our living room will be redone. It is built into the wall with a pink marble hearth about 5 inches high ( with?) and a white wooden frame and mantel. I hate the design carved into the wood and the pink hearth.

[lightbulbsun]

Ours was red brick when we moved. I like it a lot better now, it really brightens up the room. I do want to add a chunkier wood mantle.

[bex1973]

I don't have a picture but ours looks like what icedcoffee has except the brick is whitewashed and it might be a bit longer.

[eb777888]

Oct 22, 2020 9:58:03 GMT -5 TBM said:

Oct 22, 2020 9:11:41 GMT -5 eb777888 said:

I love looking at all of the fireplaces! This is our fall mantel. When we first moved in, all of the baseboards/doors/wood were BLACK, it was so ugly. We only had to paint it white.

lol Our house had white baseboards/doors/wood, and we thought that it was ugly. It really didn't fit the house style at all.

It would be a really boring world if everyone had the same taste/style, wouldn't it?

No. Everyone should adapt to exactly my preferred aesthetic. 

[icedcoffee]

I don't need to be a millionaire, but I'd like to get to the point where I can afford an interior designer. LOL

[maudefindlay]

Bad Dingo, I love your banner.

[Bad Dingo]

Oct 22, 2020 10:46:10 GMT -5 maudefindlay said:

Bad Dingo , I love your banner.

Thanks, a friend made it for me .

[tripleshot]

Ours is just black granite.

[Violet]

I'd just whitewash it and build a bigger mantle/surround.

My fireplace is nothing special enough to post. It looks whitewashed now. The prior owners painted the brick blood red and I removed as much of the paint as I could. That kinda left the brick "whitewashed". I'm actually mad at the prior owners because our original brick is a beautiful tan (matches house exterior) and I wish it was all original.

devonpow, what kind of stone are on your fireplaces?

[sandandsea]

We have two. The first in the living room (ignore the crane) is original circa mid 90s and is okay so we won’t be changing it. The second is in our master bedroom and we redid the tile and love it. We were going to change the living room one to gas burning since it’s wood with a gas starter but it was going to be majorly expensive so we decided against it. Also the bedroom one is gas so we were able to get rid of the hearth completely but there are specific codes you have to deal with regarding fireplaces and hearths and everything so be sure to check those before making big changes. Honestly we never use either.

[grosnl19]

We just redid ours.

Before (from the real estate listing)



After

We redid the floors as well.

[shananagins]

We remodeled when we bought our house and redid the fireplace. We got rid of the hearth to keep more space in the living room.

[katfco]

If you want to demo the brick, ours is probably not the way you want to go.

[ginap]

Since we never use ours we took down the mantle. Excuse the mess, we were mid renovation.

[janegold]

Oct 22, 2020 10:06:42 GMT -5 fryjack2 said:

janegold My favorite part of your picture is the wine glass in hand .

Hahaha. I should note that I snapped this pic a few weeks ago and was not actually drinking a glass of red at 10a this morning.

[janegold]

Oct 22, 2020 9:12:49 GMT -5 eb777888 said:

janegold, I LOVE your house!! I think we have the exact same area rug.

Thank you! Your fireplace is so cute too, I love how you styled the mantle!

I’ve since relocated the rug to our bedroom. I’m picking up a new one tomorrow morning; it will be our third rug in that room in less than a year. I’ve been really struggling with how to style this room.

[isabel]

Oct 22, 2020 8:14:54 GMT -5 ssmjlm said:

Here’s our current FP. It’s propane. If it were up to me, I would rip it out and replace this wall with a big sliding door out to our deck and patio. DH LOVES the fireplace though.

I really want to tear out the entire wall where our sliding glass door is and replace it with giant sliding panels so I can open up the entire living room. It would be so expensive, but so awesome. I’d be torn on that for you. I love our fireplace, but having a big opening to the outside also sounds amazing.

[donutsmakemegonuts]

Redecorating my living room was my quarantine project.  I white washed the brick myself and then painted the mantel.  The brick was a light red color and the mantel was just a medium wood color.  

[isabel]

Oct 22, 2020 10:19:12 GMT -5 icedcoffee said:

I don't need to be a millionaire, but I'd like to get to the point where I can afford an interior designer. LOL

Honestly, I was really happy with my Havenly experience. It wasn’t perfect, but my living room would be a shit show if I hadn’t done that. It was incredibly helpful. I plan to do it again when I redo our bedroom at some point.

[starburst604]

This is the one in our bedroom. We painted it white and H didn’t take off the twirly decal things 🙇‍♀️
The one in our living room is atrocious and every day I think about painting it but then I get lazy.

[jlt19]

Oooh, we're redoing ours now. We had "built ins" around a normal red brick fireplace, but I hated how much the hearth stuck out. We're redoing all of our floors so I had to make a decision fast. Got DH to rip out the hearth and then he put up a "wall" and put up brick veneer. I sanded and stained a 2x8x16ft deck board (lol) to sort of match the new floors. It still needs grout and we need to decide what else to put up on the mantle, but I'm super happy with it.

Also, ours is gas, but we've never used it and the line is capped off. I'll probably paint the firebox black or charcoal and may put in some baskets with blankets. Not sure yet. 


 

[lolalolalola]

here is ours, it's just mini stacked ledgestone.  While I'd love wood burning, I do like that gas fireplaces do not require a hearth. It gives more space and makes the room feel bigger.

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[shauni27]

Oct 22, 2020 8:14:54 GMT -5 ssmjlm said:

Here’s our current FP. It’s propane. If it were up to me, I would rip it out and replace this wall with a big sliding door out to our deck and patio. DH LOVES the fireplace though.

We had the same propane fireplace in our last house and it was what we used to heat the house! We set the thermostat at 60 and then when we would get home we would turn the fireplace on for a couple of hours and the house would be 72 in no time. We loved it.

I miss having a fireplace at our new house. I don't know where we would put it, but I really do miss it.

[audry80]

I don’t think I would have picked this busy of a tile but house cane with it.

[SusanBAnthony]

My takeaway is that all fireplaces are wierd if you look at them too long, and they are all going to look dated really fast. I feel like there is no timeless fireplace. Or maybe I just hate fireplaces haha.

I also have a dated fireplace but have no idea how to insert a pic on my phone (not the app). It is the original 1952 tan brick and brass. Lucky me brass is back in style!

[devonpow]

Oct 22, 2020 11:33:09 GMT -5 Violet said:

I'd just whitewash it and build a bigger mantle/surround.

My fireplace is nothing special enough to post. It looks whitewashed now. The prior owners painted the brick blood red and I removed as much of the paint as I could. That kinda left the brick "whitewashed". I'm actually mad at the prior owners because our original brick is a beautiful tan (matches house exterior) and I wish it was all original.

devonpow, what kind of stone are on your fireplaces?

it’s limestone of some kind - I can’t recall the exact name now 😬

[allhis]

Ours are currently decorated for Halloween and not the best imo (we renovated an older house so somewhat limited in design) but since all 3 have a different style (stone, paneling, and brick) I figured might be helpful?

[sonrisa]

I know I'm in the minority here, but don't paint the brick. replace it if you want but painting brick is just going to look dated and can't be undone. And right from the start it looks like you tried to fix something you didn't like, rather than an affirmative decision. Do what you'd actually like.

[mrsukyankee]

We have two. The pic below is before we moved in. The one on the left is non-working so we put a large wine rack in it (it stay cool so perfect for this). The other has a wood burning stove in it.








(excuse the mess - it was still in the midst of moving in)

[Deleted]

Thank you everyone for your responses.  I posted the update on H&G but wanted to come back and update here as well with what we ended up doing since you guys gave me such great advice. We decided that demoing even part of the fireplace was more than we wanted to get in to at this point and neither of us really loved the brick so we decided to completely reface it. We used a quartz ledger stone (it's like a tile, come in sheets 6in x 12in and like 1/2in thick), got a new hearth which is Pennsylvania Mountain Blue Stone and then my H build the new mantel in place. I love how it turned out. Even though I didn't get the real estate back that I was hoping for, this is definitely much more of an updated style.