Well, it's December 1st so it's now officially OKAY for me to share my Christmas fireplace!! :-D
As you can see, we went with more of a white wash look on the fireplace than I had initially planned! I had originally thought I would give it more of a historic brick, German smear look using this DIY tutorial. After I started working I realized that in order to get that look I needed more of a red brick to begin with.
Here is the "before" of our fireplace! The brick was very dark to begin with and doing the German smear technique was fine, but it looked weird with this dark brick peeking through so we just caked on more white mortar and let a few bricks peek through with a subtle distressed look instead.
I took off all the 70's gold trim and ditched it. The black rough edges are totally okay with me! :-)
We followed this tutorial pretty much step by step but our fireplace was much bigger than the DIY had us buy for. I should've guessed that, it takes up pretty much the entire living room wall! So we ended up making another trip to the hardware store to get white mortar, which can be a challenge to find!
A lot of staff don't realize that you need WHITE mortar and they'll direct you to regular mortar - which is more of a grey or dirty white look. So make sure you double check the label yourself!
On another note, aren't these stockings adorable?!! :-D I'm obsessed with snowmen ⛄️ Santa is okay but snowmen just give me all the cozy feels!! I made these stockings two years ago using my embroidery connector on my sewing machine for the names and then scrap fabric for the stockings. Actually, the boys stockings were made from one of Brandons old shirts that he never wore! Lol!
Anyway! Hope you enjoyed this! Let me know if you have any questions or would like to see more DIY type stuff!
Deanna