I am gonna be really honest, this move to our new home has been hard for me. I didn’t love our home at first sight like I did with our last, I didn’t get the feeling I had with our last home, I let my husband chose. We were getting super discourage, super stressed, nothing felt right. This home has great bones, its got a beautiful deck for entertaining and its rancher so really whats not to love!! I think we had worked so hard on our last home, doing a massive renovation of our basement, painting it from top to bottom that when we moved into a home that needed our love again I was discouraged. However since moving in I am slowly falling in love, of course I painted our home mostly white. I like to think of my decorating style as white on white on white – Which my husband hates! But he tolerates it because it has such a clean feel.
So our new home is rancher and has a lot less natural light than our last home, so it has been an adjustment we painted the whole thing white, minus the bathroom and our master, I even painted a wood wall which everyone told me I’d regret. PS I don’t! However we had this fireplace to deal with. My husband didn’t want me to paint it he wanted to leave it as he felt it broke up the white, and could be taken out down the road. But seriously since we moved in I knew I was going to be painting the stone all white!! The gas fireplace unit is very dated and had tons of gold detailing, which I knew I would just paint black like our last home. Lots of people suggested replacing it however that fireplace is a beastttttt – We’d be crazy to get a new one, they just don’t make ’em like they used to!
So last weekend was the Alberta Family day, and since my position at my work is actually for our Edmonton Branch, I was off Monday. Here was my chance, my husband had already told me he would be gone for most of Saturday and come home mid-afternoon Sunday. I knew he would never let me do it if he was home, so I waited for this family day weekend. (It is his best friends birthday so I knew he’d be out of the house).
After he left I wasted NO time. I washed the entire wall again with TSP, after it dried I actually took a blow dryer to the wall to ensure there was no dust in the cracks between the stone – there was!! Then I chose to white wash the stone as I had been pinteresting them a lot and found some I had really liked. I purchased Rust-oleum Chalked Ultra matte paint–Linen white, 1 887 ml can and a can of their spray paint – same color! I took a medium size Tupperware container and dumped the paint in, Then I added a whole Can of Water and stirred. I purchased a 2 1/2 inch paint brush,stain pro application sponge as well to help with the application. I started a the top of the fireplace to be able to touch up the drips.
As I painted I held the stain applicator sponge under the paint brush to catch most of the paint and then I also used the sponge to get into cracks. Where the cracks couldn’t fit the sponge I used the spray point to get to. It was pretty tedious work but the end result was totally worth it and it only took about 2 hours. After the white dried I used Tremclad High Heat enamel in Flat black and painted our fireplace insert, it was extremely faded and had lots of gold so I painted the entire thing to keep the color the same all over.
Best part, the whole project was done before my husband got home, so he has to just live with it!
I have read a few people who did the white wash ended up doing two coats, but I actually really like the texture that 1 coat gave us, Take a look and tell me what you think! This project is so important to me as it is the first room you see when you walk into our home and is a total focal point – I absolutely love my fireplace now and think I may love my house a lot more since completing this project as well! As soon as we find a couch we can both agree on I will post some pics of the entire space, as right now we have nothing in the room as we hunt for the perfect couch for this space!
xOx Chelsea
Mini Monsterz Mama 