Painting a Brick Fireplace

We purchased our current home back in August and are finally getting around to really making it our own between my current project of re-designing and decorating our back/family room area and my husband getting to work on the landscaping. I felt it was best to start the major decorating and painting in the room that we spend the most time in. It's important to feel comfortable in your space and this is a great place to start!

To get started with my project, it was necessary to tackle our fireplace. It's a huge focal point in the room because it actually runs the entire width of the room. This room had no lighting in it and gets very little sunlight because it only has our sliding doors and with the way our house faces we don't get direct sunlight from that angle. So aside from knocking holes in walls to add windows I needed to use paint to brighten up the space.

This is a photo of the room before we bought our house. As you can tell the walls are currently all neutral throughout the space and definitely the first thing to catch your eye is the fireplace.

This particular picture doesn't really show the true color of the brick. I would classify them more as an orange color than a true red. If they were a nice deep red, I would probably just clean them up and keep them as is but the color just didn't work for the color palette I picked out for the room.

Here are my before and afters on the fireplace. 

The paint I used is Cool Gray by Valspar. It took about a gallon and a half to get full coverage since brick is such a porous material and just absorbed the paint. I think it just makes the room so much brighter all ready. I highly recommend using a semi-gloss on a fireplace since it will make it easier to wipe down if you actually use your fireplace. Check back for more room updates and this project moves forward!