Goodbye bricks

Take a good last look

Apparently I was right about having a bug to change the fireplace, b/c a week later I’ve got drywall over it ready to prime for some peel & stick tiles. So much for waiting for Christmas, although let’s see how long it takes to get the rest of this done. 

That went surprisingly quick.

I did not think the white brick was too bad. But after redoing everything else, painted brick just didn’t quite vibe with what we were putting together in the basement. So after a lot of research on renovating brick fireplaces, I came up with the current plan and the wife agreed.

So quick I ended up doing more.

Which, thank god, b/c for a while it looked like we were going to try and thin set the entire thing and then tile it with large tile. Which would have looked good (probably) but the idea of trimming large-format tile to fit into all the corners and crannies of that fireplace had me shaking my head. I had a hard enough time with tile that fit around our kitchen just about perfectly. Turns out it was much easier to just cover it in left over drywall and prep it for peel & stick. Like, “less than an afternoon’s worth of work with some football on in the background” easier, just the way I like it.

This is actually an improvement, believe it or not.

In fact, things went so well I surprised myself by diving into taping and mudding the corners where everything meets too. So now we have a big green fireplace instead of a white brick one. I think I actually like it better this way, which is the theme for the entire basement at this point. But the corners are much cleaner at least, b/c the rough spots from not knowing how to transition from drywall to brick aren’t a problem anymore. I should have taken more “before” pictures, some of that work was truly horrible. But we’re in decent shape now I think. Some primer, some level lines, and we might be good to go.