Cozy Fireplace Makeover
When I bought my house, I was so excited to have a cozy fireplace. However, this fireplace desperately needed a makeover. Even though I live in Texas and seldom use a fireplace, it’s a cozy feature in the home. I completely underestimated the work that goes into tear out and re-tiling a fireplace area. What I thought I could knock it out in a day or two ended up taking a few weekends. In the end, I needed to call a professional dry wall repair person in to fix some of our demo damage. We did finish the makeover and ended up with a cozy fireplace!
If you like this makeover blog post, check out the DIY Laundry Room Makeover blog post HERE.
Demo the Old Fireplace Tile
The first step was to tear off the current tiles. This stuff was REALLY cemented onto the wall surrounding the built-in gas fireplace so we ended up taking a decent amount of drywall with us. I would recommend avoiding the removal of the drywall if at all possible. You can see in the picture that we were able to remove the tile, but the cement was applied so heavily that there were mounds of it left sticking out on the dry wall. No matter how hard we chipped at it, the wall came with it.
Fireplace Drywall Repair
One step closer to finished with our cozy fireplace makeover, this step required us to fill in the drywall spots that we had damaged during demo. We used two 2’x2′ pieces of drywall squares to cut and fill the area. These squares are much more manageable than purchasing a HUGE piece of drywall. Along the bottom, there were no studs to attach the drywall since the fireplace is just propped up on cinder blocks. We used 2 small sections of 2×4 and drilled them to the floor to give us something drill the drywall screws into.
A Cozy Fireplace needs Fun Tile!
I found a relatively cheap deal on floor tiles at Home Depot to use in this project. I had actually considered painting the tile with a similar stencil, but decided for the full demo when I found the design in tile form and the perfect size.The 8×8″ tile worked perfectly on the vertical sides of the fireplace. A tile any wider would not have fit around those sides.
We applied the tiles using a bucket of tile adhesive. This step in the process actually took about 6 hours. There was an art to setting the tiles and getting the spacers in without having them slide down the wall. We used a tile snap cutter to score the center tiles (needed to be half the size down the middle stripe) and snap them in half perfectly straight. After this set, we grouted the lines and cleaned the surface with a sponge.
To really finish up the fireplace makeover, we had to call in a professional fix the damaged drywall above the tile. Hanging a mantle over this area would camouflage any blemishes, but we knew we were in over our heads to get it even and replicate the texture on the rest of the walls.
Completed Fireplace Look & Decor List
The finishing touches came from a few places. You can find links below to the decor items.
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Tools and Parts List
- Power Drill and Hammer
- Tile Adhesive and Grout
- Tile Spacers
- 2X2 Drywall Patching Panel
