While we hem and haw about picking a date to have the drywall finished, I figured I should address one easy-to-fix eyesore:
the partially painted chimney that separates our kitchen from our living room. I broke out my paint brush and managed to finish it over a couple of evenings (it's a small area, but those mortar joints take forever!). Three of the chimney's four sides are now painted. I'd like to paint the kitchen side too, but Adam wants to keep it natural (my objection is that it's an orange-y 60's brick and I think painting it white will modernize and brighten up the entire kitchen).
The newly painted brick is the first thing you see when you walk downstairs, so it needs some art - something that will make us smile day after day. Here are some ideas that have my wheels turning - what would you do?
One of the most dramatic transformations we've made since we moved into our new house is the chimney/fireplace, which started out as a giant, red monolith in our living room. We decided to paint it white, hoping it would make the room feel lighter, brighter and just a little bit bigger.
So as soon as our lawyer handed us the keys, I removed the fireplace grate, snapped on a pair of rubber gloves, and scrubbed those bricks with a mixture of TSP (trisodium phosphate - a strong cleaner) and water. Using a roller, I covered the surface of the bricks with
Sico semi-gloss paint in "cotton rag paper" (paint colours have the strangest names). That was the easy part. The cracks on the other hand...I painted with a small brush. One by one.
It took forever. And luckily, it was well worth it:
It took around three coats and three-quarters of a gallon of paint to cover three sides of the chimney (we left the exposed side in the kitchen untouched). I painted the cracks only once, because I was sure doing it more than once would have driven me into insanity.
I love the way it turned out - the room definitely feels lighter and brighter, and the texture of the bricks still shows through the paint, which I also love. Now I just have to figure out how to decorate that mantle...
