Eeee! One of my favorite reveals to date! Our home feels completely transformed with the new doors, paint, and now the plaster fireplace. Also, our curtains just arrived and will go up on Wednesday (stay tuned for all the details on those)! Then it will really feel complete. Oh, and beams get installed in two weeks! But more on that later… 😉
Our family room maintains the original built-in fireplace and cabinet structure, which you can see in the image below. Crazy how far it’s come, right?! This photo was taken when we did a house walkthrough before moving in 7 years ago.
Original Fireplace
When we moved in the fireplace was still the original brick. After a few years, we decided to paint it white and loved that look for a while.
Painted Brick Fireplace
Lately, I’ve been craving a cleaner, more updated look and decided to go with plaster! Our family room is fairly small, so with the built-ins and brick, it felt a little cluttered to me. I knew the plaster would help create a more sophisticated look.
Plaster Fireplace
I had Matt from MB General Contracting Inc. complete this job for us and couldn’t be happier with how it turned out. He did such an amazing job! If you are handy, I’m sure you could tackle this as a DIY. Here are some of the basic steps Matt did to create this new look.
Plaster Over Brick:
1. Apply drywall over brick with glue and screws. We did not use drywall on the hearth. He did a mix of glue and plaster to cover the texture of the brick and make it smooth.
2. Attach metal pieces to edges and corners to create clean lines
3. Apply 1 layer of drywall mud
4. Apply 1 layer of bonding primer
5. Apply 2 layers of plaster. Matt ordered Firmolux Venetian Plaster in Swiss Coffee at 75%, which is the same as our walls. If I could do it again, I would go with a slightly brighter white to create some contrast between the wall and fireplace. Especially since our built-ins are painted a brighter white (SW Pure White)! We may eventually give the cabinets a fresh coat of paint but we are leaving them for now!
All we have left to do is install new shaker cabinet door fronts, which Matt is doing today!
Hope you love this makeover as much as we do. Let me know what you think, and be sure to head check out my ‘fireplace’ highlight over on Instagram for more behind-the-scenes videos!
