Wednesday, April 10, 2013

1970's Stone Fireplace Makeover

1970's Stone Fireplace Before & After


Hello Fellow DIYers!

If you are reading this post, you may have an imposing, dark, 1970's style stone fireplace that is turning your living area into a cave. And you may have searched for HOURS online and on Pinterest trying to find a good way to update it without turning your house into a construction zone.  And you may have looked at pictures of painted stone that looks, well... painted, and thrown your hands up saying you would rather have a natural-looking, ugly fireplace than a fake-looking, painted fireplace.  Well my friends, I am here to tell you, the struggle is over.  And let me tell you, it was SO easy (though quite time consuming for the whole wall).  Here is my fireplace before and after-->



Here is how I achieved this:

  1. Clean the stone with a little soapy water. 
  2. Vacuum all the little pebbles and sand from the grout and stone surface.
  3. Lay a tarp/ drop cloth on floor and tape the edges.
  4. Tape ceiling and walls
  5. Paint the entire face, including grout, with watered-down ASCP in Paris Grey.
  6. Add some white (flat) latex house paint to the ASCP mixture.
  7. Use a dry-brushing technique to achieve dimension.  Make sure you do this lightly so as to only accent the stone peaks, not the valleys.  This will look more realistic. 
    Left side: not dry-brushed.  Right side: dry-brushed
  8. Do any touch-ups where they are needed to have a similar look to every stone.
  9. Light a fire!
Hope you enjoyed the tutorial!  Post comments if you have any questions :)

18 comments:

  1. That looks wonderful! Great job!

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  2. What is the paint to water ratio? And the chalk paint to latex paint ratio?

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    2. I just added enough water to make the paint a bit more runny, but not translucent, and still allow for good, even coverage. If I had to guess I would say about 3:1 paint to water. For the white latex paint, add enough to get the tone you want. That ratio is probably 2:1 chalk paint to white latex paint. Hopefully this helps, sorry I don't have exact numbers! Thanks for posting and good luck.

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  3. Thank You so much for giving me hope!

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  4. How many 1L cans of ASCP did you end up using for this project? I want to do something similar but want to get a feel for how much paint to order.

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    1. I probably used about 2/3 of the ASCP can. And my wall is quite large! It really goes a long way, especially since you are watering it down.

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  5. I tried this on my fireplace. It worked great! Thanks for your post. I've lived with my ugly fireplace for 10 year. Now I actually love it.

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  6. By the way we used a paint to water ratio of about 50/50. For the dry brushing part we cut the chalkpaint water mixture with about 25% white house paint.

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  8. What did you use to apply the paint/water mixture? Did you use the same thing for the Annie sloan/latex paint mixture?

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  9. Could this also work on a stone exterior fireplace and backyard BBQ ? The home we moved into has a wonderful natural design pool/spa (grays) but they chose to put in orangish stonework on the fireplace and bbq...

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  10. Love this. I am desperate to do an update on our old faux stone 70's wall. Will this work on the Faux rock?

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  11. Hello, I have been desperately wanting to paint ours. My husband doesn't want it painted "white", to him, grey will fall into the "white" category. Can you suggest a good natural "tan" for lack of fancy paint colors.I'd prefer the grey, but I will compromise. =-)

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  12. Hi, Can you explain the dry brush technique with the white paint? So first paint it all with the grey... then come back and hit it with a white/grey/water mix?

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