Fireplace Makeover | Part 1

Hi Friend!

When I first shared our fireplace on social media, so many of you weighed in and gave input as to how to give this fireplace a makeover. I knew refreshing this fireplace was going to require more than just a quick fix if I wanted it to feel like it was always apart of the home. So today I’m sharing all the ideas we’ve thought through, the solutions to some of those ideas, and why we aren’t doing some of the more common ideas you see in fireplace makeovers.

Here we go~

When we first moved into our new home we knew eventually we would want to tackle the fireplace in our kitchen. Our home was recently renovated, so while we have a lot of modern amenities for a home that was built in 1775, there is still some of the original charm too. Our home is considered a center chimney colonial style, meaning we have one very large chimney running up the middle of our house, with multiple fireplaces that were used to heat different rooms back when it was built, with the largest fireplace being in the kitchen, where you would also use it to cook with.

*Sidenote : The previous home owners had a woodstove inserted in the fireplace, which you can see in the photo above, but it was a bit too “country” for my taste, so we removed it while contemplating how we wanted to refresh the fireplace.*

With the newer renovations, our kitchen fireplace is open to both our kitchen and our dining room, nestled right in the middle, where we created a seating area that acts more like a keeping room. Since this center chimney is the main focal point when you walk into this space, I really wanted to make sure that any updates we did to it felt like they went with the original era of the home.

Renovations are great, and I am all for updating a home, however when you live in an older home there is a fine line between updating and removing its’ original character – which I did not want to do. I decided to live with the brick for a little while. Knowing the brick isn’t my favorite choice, I also realized it could be worse. I kept in mind that we plan on living in this home for the rest of our days, so I kept asking myself “Is this something I want to live with forever?”.

While the fireplace is original to the house, this particular brick was not original. The chimney was rebuilt at some point in the last 20 years, and while they did a good job picking brick that resembled a more “aged” look, knowing it wasn’t the original removed any sentimental attachment of trying to preserve the brick itself. It also felt like the brick was competing with the reclaimed wood wall next to it, that is part of our kitchen – and one of them had to give. Visually, our fireplace area felt so dark and heavy in the space with it’s large size, but the reclaimed wood wall next to it, felt like it made the room too busy, and gave the space too many focal points.

While sanding down the wood wall helped soften the look some, and tone down all the different wood tones going on in the space, all the brick was making the space feel dark. My husband and I both love the look of real stone, so refacing it with some type of stone was an idea we had from day 1.

Quick Fix Option #1 – Painting the Brick

Knowing that we could potentially be refacing it with stone someday (after I lived with the brick for awhile to see if I could make it work), that ruled out any sort of quick fix to the brick like painting it. Since my husband works in the chimney industry, he is very knowledgable on what you can and can’t do to brick if you want to be able to reface it with stone. If you paint brick you are no longer able to reface it stone without some sort of wire meshing going up first (which would be an added cost), since the paint covers up the bricks poreus surface and makes it too smooth for mortar to adhere to. So that ruled out any urge I had to whip out a paint can, and paint the fireplace. 😛

Fireplace Functioning Ideas

I loved the idea of converting the fireplace back to a real wood burning fireplace like you see in ski lodges all over New England. However do the massive size of our fireplace opening, once you go to open the damper to allow the fireplace to properly vent once its’ lit, all of that heat is now escaping your house. Meaning we would be letting in more cold air than heat just to create some ambiance. Not to mention the extensive chimney work that would have to be done behind that walls to bring everything up to code.

We explored all the other options as well to keep the original fireplace structure. Inserting a gas log set, however back to the massive size of this fireplace opening the size log set we would need to fill it, would have us burning through more gas, making more expensive to just turn the fireplace on. We also looked into electric fireplace options, like water vapor, but would have to build up the front of the fireplace to hide the kit, and with that option would only be for esthetics as they don’t produce any real source of heat.

My husband always liked the idea of installing a wood stove back into the fireplace opening because of how efficient they are, and we live in an area where we loose power (sometimes often) during the winter months, and a woodstove requires no electricity to run, like say an electric fireplace or a pellet stove. I know there are so many options, but choosing the right one really came down to our specific needs for how we wanted the fireplace to work – Provide an alternative source of heat, especially when the power goes out – and with the unusual larger size of the fireplace opening, it kept our options pretty slim since we weren’t looking to spend over tens of thousands of dollars.

While I was really hoping that we could revert the fireplace back to its’ original working state, it just wasn’t the most effective solution for us in terms of heat and cost. I believe that part of designing a home, is making sure both the wife AND the husband are happy. And since my husband lets me decorate pretty much any way I like, I was happy to compromise on what we ultimately decided on for the fireplace.

The Plan

We plan on refacing the lower half of the brick with stone. I want to make sure that when we are done the fireplace will look like it’s always been this way, so I’m choosing materials that look and feel original to not only the time period our home was built, but also geographically where we live. We plan on replacing the wood beam mantle, with a new/old wood beam mantle, but one that runs the entire length of the fireplace, removing the brick ends on either side of the mantle. We also plan on lowering the mantle, giving me more space above the mantle to decorate with. Above the mantle we plan on building a board and batten type panel that will cover the brick, and hang two sconces on either side. Then we will insert a new woodstove into the fireplace opening so we can have an alternative source of heat in the winter as well.

I can’t wait for you to see what I have envisioned for our fireplace. I know it’s hard to envision without any plans, but I can assure you my #1 goal is to make sure when we are done that the fireplace still looks original to the house, just a little bit more with our style incorporated in. It’s a huge focal point in our kitchen, and I can’t wait for you to see it!