Can You Remove Paint From Brick Fireplace

Last twelvemonth, when my business firm downwards payment fund ticked over the $25,000 marker and I started casually firm hunting, one of the showtime things I did was make a list of must-have features and nice-to-have features. My must-take features included obvious things like a 2d bedroom, a lawn, and a parking space. My nice-to-have list was much longer but included harder to find features like a finished basement, a fireplace, and mature gardens. The business firm I concluded up choosing ticked many boxes on my must-have and nice-to-have list and the ane I was most excited nigh was the fireplace.

Photo from original list – I need to have better before photos!

While the habitation inspector warned us that "this was not a functioning fireplace" I was all the same pumped that this house came with a identify to somewhen put a fireplace insert, and in the meantime, I wanted to make information technology every bit beautiful as possible. When we moved in everything in this house was covered with many layers of paint, and the fireplace was no exception. My hubby and I both agreed that returning the fireplace back to its original brick would add some much-needed warmth and character to our dining room, but how to go near it? After spending hours on Google, we concluded that removing pigment from the fireplace was indeed possible.

Here's how I restored this fireplace to its original beauty for just $300.

Tools for My Fireplace Refresh

Determining my course of activity for removing the paint from my fireplace took hours of online research. In that location are a ton of dissimilar methods, and everyone and their female parent accept an opinion on the all-time method (including 1 hardware store employee who insisted it just couldn't be done). There were a few factors influenced how I would go about tackling this project:

The possible presence of lead paint indoors meant sand blasting was out of the question.
I needed to be able to practise information technology myself relatively inexpensively, equally I had no money in the upkeep to rent this projection out.

Somewhen, I settled on using a non-chemical stripper for the job, which led me to the following materials list. (Some of the links below are chapter links).

Pb pigment test kit
Ability drill (owned)
Wire cup brush
five-in-1 painter'due south tool
Putty knife
Wire brushes
Cheap paint brushes
Super fine steel wool
Gloves
Mask
Plastic sheeting
SoyGel

The real workhorse of this materials list was the SoyGel, which I bought off Amazon for $117. SoyGel is a paint and poly remover that is non-toxic, non-corrosive, 100% biodegradable and has no known wellness hazards. While those attributes might lead you to conclude this stripper is weak, permit me assure you – information technology is not. That stuff will eat through any paint or poly in its path, including the paint on the baseboards I accidentally spattered it on, and the poly on my tabular array where I spilled a few drops. Information technology even ate the varnish off my iPhone instance when I used my phone after getting a fiddling stripper on my fingers.

SoyGel had better reviews than Citristrip and Pare Away for my specific application (brick) which is why I chose it over those other options. It was also the easiest to procure here in Nova Scotia, Canada, and it is known to be a expert way to remove lead paint.

Prepping the Surface

The first thing I practise whenever I'm getting ready to disturb painted surfaces in this house is test it for pb pigment. Over the past few months, I've come to recognize that anything that was once painted baby blueish volition test positive for lead paint. I saw a tiny bit of baby blue peeking out from nether the white paint on the curtain, and then I opted to test the drape and the brick separately.

The painted brick came back negative for lead, just the mantle tested positive. That was one of the key reasons I chose SoyGel: the gel encapsulates the lead paint and keeps the particles from becoming airborne where they can be harmful.

Once I knew there was atomic number 82 on the mantle, I suited upward in total protective gear (mask, gloves) and brushed the SoyGel onto the mantle with a cheap paint brush. After about 20 minutes, the starting time layer of paint gooped right off similar butter. I used the putty knife to scrape the peeled paint into a garbage bag and disposed of it according to my municipality's regulations (cheque yours if you plan to try to remove lead pigment yourself). It took ii rounds of stripping, hither's how it looked subsequently round one:

The unpainted brick had been covered past the old contumely fireplace environment.

Information technology took some other circular to remove the stain underneath the pigment.

Strip Paint From Brick Fireplace

The mantle was such a piece of cake that I felt confident that the brick would as well go smoothly. Oh, how naive I was. Information technology took several rounds of trial and error before I found a system that works, but here's what I settled on:

First, I brushed on a thick layer of SoyGel and let it sit. I experimented with a few dissimilar durations, and around an hour seemed to be the sweet spot that let the stripper practice its affair without drying out.

One time the paint was all bubbly, I slowly scraped it off with the 5-in-1 tool and putty knife. Since this paint was newer and pb-free, and the SoyGel is noncorrosive and had no fumes, I didn't need to wear gloves or a mask for this part. Once I had scraped off the summit layer of paint from the get-go 3rd of the fireplace, information technology looked similar this:

Not exactly where I wanted to be. Fortunately, there are more steps involved here. The side by side footstep was to take the wire cup attachment I'd purchased for my drill, and use that to elevator the remaining paint from the brick. I also used a wire bristled brush for hard to reach places. This fabricated the paint and gel course a gooey, gross paste, which I wiped off first with super-fine steel wool and water (use gloves for this part!) and and so a wet rag. Hither's a picture showing the difference betwixt painted brick, scraped brick, and wire-brushed/steel wooled/wet ragged brick:

Finally, I was left with this after my beginning go and six hours of work:

Delight excuse the tardily-nighttime blurry iPhone photograph

I proceeded to utilise the aforementioned technique to the rest of the fireplace. Incidentally, Soygel as well fabricated a very good stripper for the decades of soot that had congenital upwards behind the sometime brass fireplace environs. Here's how it looked after round one:

After the get-go round of stripping, which took my whole weekend and the better function of my evenings 1 week, I took a break before going in for circular two. Circular ii went much, much easier but considering near of the paint had already been removed. I generally skipped the putty knife office and went straight to wire castor and steel wool. It also took less time, about three hours per third of fireplace instead of six.

Mantle Stain, Poly, and Caulk

At this bespeak the mantle was looking like this:

While I like the raw wood look, the mantle was giving off some serious old-wood vibes and making my firm scent like an former church building. So I patched the old nail holes and gouges with woods putty, and after making absolutely certain all of the lead paint was gone, I donned my mask and used a borrowed sander to smooth up the surface before staining.

I used my leftover supplies from my mid-century modern entertainment centre to stain the mantle. I striking it beginning with a coat of Minwax Special Walnut stain, which immediately turned the drapery much darker and redder than I hoped. I blame it on the fact that the wood on the drapery had a singled-out orangish-y colour. Afterward letting it cure for a day or two it had settled to a deep ruby-red-chocolate-brown that wasn't so bad, so I brushed on 3 coats of satin water-based poly over the next few days and called it done.

There was one concluding step in making the mantle beautiful: caulking. All of that paint stripping had left the caulk in terrible shape:

Gross.

And so I scraped and tried to remove as much as possible earlier using painters tape to create a make clean outline for the new caulk. I've never caulked earlier so the painter's record besides reduced the possibility of me making a giant mess. Fortunately, it was super piece of cake and I used regular paintable trim caulk that the previous owner had left behind. The trick with using painter'due south tape to get a clean caulk line is to remove the tape earlier the caulk has fully dried, otherwise, y'all risk pulling information technology upwardly with the record. Of course, caulking meant I now had a line of white on my mantle, but I used paint to address that.

Painting the Accent Wall

When we painted over the puke yellowish in the front rooms of this house with a cozy greyness, we knew that the wall above the fireplace was but begging to be an accent wall. Both my husband and I agreed that a night green or blueish would be perfect in that infinite, so we set up out for some samples. You may remember this motion picture on twitter in Feb:

The samples weren't cheap and set up united states of america back nearly $40. But it was totally worth it since nothing beats getting pigment on your wall and letting information technology interact with your unique lighting and nearby elements. Since our old floors are very light yellow and the brick is so ruby, I was concerned about some of the paint colours looking also green. In the stop, we chose Kwal's Crave colour matched at Sherwin Williams. Fortunately, the sample can was more than enough for this tiny infinite.

I used painter's record along the edges to get a super straight line and I as well ran painter's tape along the caulk on the mantle and painted right over it to hibernate that bright white line.

Not bad! In one case I added some accessories, touched upward the wall paint and hung a vintage Indiana Jones print, it looked like this:

And there'southward a shot of how the wood patching/sanding caulking turned out on the drape. The wood filler did not take the stain the same style as the remainder of the wood, simply information technology'southward only really noticeable on a seam I had to fill up in.

Overall this project simply cost us $300 for all of the supplies. The SoyGel was the most expensive item by far, and I'm happy to written report that over half of the jug remains, which means I have a pigment stripping appointment with my original-to-the-dwelling doors soon. I likewise take leftover plastic sheeting and atomic number 82 tests, and now I officially have a wire cup brush, a mask, and gloves.

One more than before and after:

Eventually, the plan is to put slate over the stained concrete hearth (that is no longer to code anyway) and add a wood burning inset. Simply that'south a $3,000 job at minimum so we'll have to be content with our cheap electric simulated burn for now.

Tips If You Plan to Strip Paint Off Brick Fireplace

Just use SoyGel, it worked, amazingly well, and non having to use gloves or a mask for this 27+ hour project was amazing.
Apply a lot of gel per brick. There should be a thick layer of gel on each brick.
Experiment with the set time for the gel. I found an hour worked best but I only had one layer of paint to deal with.
Exist prepared to spend a lot of time scraping and scrubbing. You tin can't rush this so queue upward some Netflix to heed to while you piece of work and crack a beer or 3 while y'all're at information technology.

What was the last DIY project you tackled? How much did you relieve by doing information technology yourself? I want to know!

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