I finished the initial living room renovation in February last year (original post here) and have been slowly adding new furniture, accessories and perfecting the ‘look’ ever since. The Fireplace was originally wooden and a freebie from one of my dad’s customers. I stain blocked, primed and painted it in white eggshell so that it joined up with the white skirting boards in the room, but it never felt quite right – hence the mini fireplace makeover now.
I thought I’d go through the steps I’d taken this time to go from white to a much more statement black in case you’re thinking of doing the same.
The steps:
1. Prep
The first step was to sand it all over with a fine grit sandpaper – this means that the new paint has something to grip on to and makes the final finish more durable. Next, I taped all around with frog tape (not a product I’d recommend as I’ve had very few good experiences with it!) to make sure that the black paint didn’t bleed onto the walls. In the end, I had to repaint over most of the taped areas of the wall as it took the paint with it when I peeled it off – quite annoying!
2. The equipment
I started off with a small brush, with the idea that I’d use a small foam roller to finish off but decided to stick with the brush throughout as the detail of the fireplace surround itself is quite intricate which meant that there wasn’t really any flat surfaces that would get the benefit of the roller. I chose to the Dulux Quick Dry Eggshell in Black and only used around 1/5th of the 750ml in for the whole project. It’s a really strong, solid black colour – I had thought about getting an off black to make it a bit softer, but decided to go for a bit of drama and get a true black.
3. The result
It took 3 full coats to get a completely solid look, with 6 hours in between each, which I wouldn’t necessarily say was ‘quick dry’ but I guess it could be worse! It took more paint than I expected, but I guess that’s what you get when you paint over white with black! I would’ve ideally liked to have primed before starting with the black paint but couldn’t find any dark primer in stock anywhere! Anyway… it worked – that was my mini fireplace makeover – what do you think?!