How To Remove Paint From Brick Fireplace

Last year, when my firm down payment fund ticked over the $25,000 mark and I started casually house hunting, one of the first things I did was make a list of must-have features and nice-to-have features. My must-take features included obvious things similar a 2d bedroom, a backyard, and a parking space. My nice-to-take listing was much longer but included harder to find features like a finished basement, a fireplace, and mature gardens. The house I ended upwards choosing ticked many boxes on my must-have and nice-to-have listing and the i I was most excited about was the fireplace.

Photograph from original listing – I need to take improve before photos!

While the home inspector warned us that "this was not a performance fireplace" I was still pumped that this firm came with a identify to somewhen put a fireplace insert, and in the meantime, I wanted to go far as 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 grapheme to our dining room, but how to go about it? After spending hours on Google, we ended that removing pigment from the fireplace was indeed possible.

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

Tools for My Fireplace Refresh

Determining my course of activeness for removing the pigment from my fireplace took hours of online research. At that place are a ton of different methods, and everyone and their mother accept an stance on the best method (including ane hardware store employee who insisted it simply couldn't be done). There were a few factors influenced how I would go nearly tackling this project:

The possible presence of lead pigment indoors meant sand blasting was out of the question.
I needed to exist able to exercise it myself relatively inexpensively, equally I had no money in the budget to hire this project out.

Eventually, I settled on using a non-chemic stripper for the job, which led me to the following materials listing. (Some of the links beneath are affiliate links).

Lead paint test kit
Power drill (owned)
Wire cup brush
5-in-1 painter'south tool
Putty pocketknife
Wire brushes
Cheap paint brushes
Super fine steel wool
Gloves
Mask
Plastic sheeting
SoyGel

The existent workhorse of this materials listing 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 health hazards. While those attributes might lead you to conclude this stripper is weak, let me assure you – it is not. That stuff volition consume through any paint or poly in its path, including the paint on the baseboards I accidentally spattered it on, and the poly on my table where I spilled a few drops. It even ate the varnish off my iPhone example when I used my phone afterward getting a little stripper on my fingers.

SoyGel had meliorate reviews than Citristrip and Peel 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 information technology is known to be a good way to remove lead paint.

Prepping the Surface

The showtime affair I do whenever I'm getting ready to disturb painted surfaces in this house is exam it for lead paint. Over the past few months, I've come to recognize that anything that was once painted baby blueish will test positive for atomic number 82 pigment. I saw a tiny bit of babe blue peeking out from nether the white pigment on the drape, so I opted to exam the drapery and the brick separately.

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

Once I knew in that location was lead on the mantle, I suited up in full protective gear (mask, gloves) and brushed the SoyGel onto the drape with a cheap pigment brush. Afterwards about 20 minutes, the first layer of paint gooped right off like butter. I used the putty knife to scrape the peeled paint into a garbage bag and disposed of information technology according to my municipality's regulations (check yours if yous programme to try to remove lead paint yourself). Information technology took 2 rounds of stripping, hither's how it looked after round one:

The unpainted brick had been covered by the quondam brass fireplace environs.

It took another round to remove the stain underneath the paint.

Strip Pigment From Brick Fireplace

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

Showtime, I brushed on a thick layer of SoyGel and allow it sit. I experimented with a few different durations, and around an 60 minutes seemed to be the sweet spot that let the stripper exercise its matter without drying out.

Once the paint was all bubbly, I slowly scraped it off with the 5-in-1 tool and putty pocketknife. Since this paint was newer and pb-free, and the SoyGel is noncorrosive and had no fumes, I didn't demand to article of clothing gloves or a mask for this office. In one case I had scraped off the meridian layer of pigment from the first tertiary of the fireplace, it looked similar this:

Not exactly where I wanted to be. Fortunately, there are more than steps involved here. The next pace was to take the wire cup attachment I'd purchased for my drill, and use that to lift the remaining paint from the brick. I also used a wire bristled brush for hard to accomplish places. This made the paint and gel grade a gooey, gross paste, which I wiped off first with super-fine steel wool and water (use gloves for this part!) and and then a wet rag. Here'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 first become and 6 hours of piece of work:

Please excuse the belatedly-night blurry iPhone photo

I proceeded to apply the aforementioned technique to the rest of the fireplace. Incidentally, Soygel also fabricated a very expert stripper for the decades of soot that had congenital up backside the old brass fireplace surround. Here'southward how information technology looked after round i:

Later on the first round of stripping, which took my whole weekend and the improve part of my evenings ane week, I took a break before going in for round two. Round 2 went much, much easier just because well-nigh of the paint had already been removed. I mostly skipped the putty knife part and went direct to wire brush and steel wool. Information technology likewise took less time, about three hours per third of fireplace instead of half dozen.

Mantle Stain, Poly, and Caulk

At this bespeak the mantle was looking similar this:

While I like the raw wood look, the mantle was giving off some serious one-time-wood vibes and making my house smell like an old church building. So I patched the old nail holes and gouges with wood putty, and after making admittedly sure all of the lead paint was gone, I donned my mask and used a borrowed sander to polish up the surface before staining.

I used my leftover supplies from my mid-century modern entertainment center to stain the pall. I striking it get-go with a glaze of Minwax Special Walnut stain, which immediately turned the mantle much darker and redder than I hoped. I arraign it on the fact that the wood on the drape had a singled-out orange-y colour. After letting it cure for a twenty-four hour period or two it had settled to a deep red-dark-brown that wasn't so bad, and then I brushed on three coats of satin h2o-based poly over the next few days and called it washed.

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

Gross.

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 before so the painter'southward tape as well reduced the possibility of me making a behemothic mess. Fortunately, information technology was super like shooting fish in a barrel and I used regular paintable trim caulk that the previous owner had left behind. The trick with using painter's tape to get a clean caulk line is to remove the record before the caulk has fully stale, otherwise, you chance pulling it up with the record. Of course, caulking meant I now had a line of white on my pall, but I used paint to address that.

Painting the Accent Wall

When nosotros painted over the puke yellow in the forepart rooms of this house with a cozy grayness, we knew that the wall above the fireplace was just begging to be an accent wall. Both my husband and I agreed that a dark green or blue would be perfect in that space, then we set out for some samples. Yous may remember this picture on twitter in February:

The samples weren't inexpensive and set united states back well-nigh $xl. But it was totally worth information technology since nothing beats getting pigment on your wall and letting information technology collaborate with your unique lighting and nearby elements. Since our quondam floors are very light yellow and the brick is so red, I was concerned nearly some of the pigment colours looking besides green. In the cease, nosotros chose Kwal'south Crave colour matched at Sherwin Williams. Fortunately, the sample can was more than enough for this tiny space.

I used painter'due south tape along the edges to get a super straight line and I also ran painter's tape along the caulk on the mantle and painted right over information technology to hide that bright white line.

Corking! One time I added some accessories, touched up the wall pigment and hung a vintage Indiana Jones print, it looked like this:

And there's a shot of how the wood patching/sanding caulking turned out on the mantle. The woods filler did not take the stain the same style as the balance of the wood, but it'south only really noticeable on a seam I had to make full in.

Overall this project only cost u.s. $300 for all of the supplies. The SoyGel was the most expensive item past far, and I'm happy to report that over half of the jug remains, which means I have a paint stripping appointment with my original-to-the-home doors soon. I as well have leftover plastic sheeting and pb tests, and at present I officially have a wire cup brush, a mask, and gloves.

I more earlier and after:

Eventually, the program is to put slate over the stained concrete hearth (that is no longer to lawmaking anyway) and add a wood burning inset. But that'south a $3,000 chore at minimum so nosotros'll have to be content with our cheap electric faux burn for at present.

Tips If You Plan to Strip Pigment Off Brick Fireplace

Just use SoyGel, it worked, amazingly well, and not having to utilize gloves or a mask for this 27+ 60 minutes project was amazing.
Use a lot of gel per brick. At that place should exist a thick layer of gel on each brick.
Experiment with the fix time for the gel. I found an hr worked all-time just I but had one layer of paint to deal with.
Be prepared to spend a lot of time scraping and scrubbing. You tin't rush this then queue up some Netflix to listen to while y'all work and crack a beer or three while you're at it.

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