Cheap Fireplace Makeover

We just  purchased our home in June and have wanted to do a bunch of renos already :).  One project  in particular is attacking our outdated fireplace. 

Here is the before shot.

It was stained pretty bad, so we had to scrub the soot off with an organic cleaner. The brown brick totally made the whole basement look dark & dingy.  We could also do without the brass surround. 

While we'd love to do this....

Currently, our budget has us saving for other things... sigh. Oh well. Someday.

We painted the brass with a High heat paint. Simple enough.

Then, we decided to try 'white washing' the brick. Which is basically watered down paint.  We were going for a greyish brick look but it ended up looking HORRIBLE. So we painted another full layer of the white latex on the brick and are happy with the result.

It will have to do until we can totally get rid of the brick. But we feel that we accomplished our goal of brightening up the space :) And all for the cost of a can and bucket of paint!

Bri & Adam