Fire Place Help?

Question

We are looking at purchasing a home with two fireplaces, it's really outdated but I would love to keep the original work as much as possible...in the living room it's about 10foot long of just brick with a 2 foot actual fire place it's about 1.5ft tall and basically just something like a bench seat. The wall around it is covered in the same brick used for the fireplace but the rest of the wall in the room is a building brick. The bricks are huge and I need some help on what to do, I just want to paint them for now and hang drywall later but not too sure how to go about it. HELP!

We want to keep the brick on the fireplace...it's very nice and well kept...it will be about 10-15 foot long small red brick but the whole wall messures 22ft in length and what isn't the red brick is huge concrete bricks that are painted GREEN...it looks horrible, but since this is our first house we are wanting to do little things at first...I am just looking for an idea to hide the bigger bricks for now...we thought about painting them a tan color till we drywall

Thanks everyone for your Help! We almost bought it but found abestos in the utility room, dry rot in a bedroom, and the add on in the front has a crack, oh and the electrical is so outdated that we would have to redo it all...Too much work for a couple starting out with a limited budget!

Answer 1

I love that you're keeping the real brick red. The other "building bricks", which you say are already painted, can just be repainted with regular wall paint in the color of your choice. Go with a color that compliments your furniture, or go neutral with an off-white (plain white may be too glaring). You can stencil a design 1/2 way or so up the wall, on all of the walls in this large brick, to give it a nice decorative accent.

Answer 2

The cheapest way is to just paint the green away.
Keep the brick. It adds character to the house. And although drywall is "inexpensive" actully hanging and finishing it gets much more costly than you would think.
Keep the red brick. I would either choose a mossy green, nothing with any brighteness for the other wall, or something with an earthy brown.
The best way to accent natural features is to use natural colors.

If you use a mossy very toned down green, keep in mind that green and red are compliments. Their colors appear to bounce off each other and use each other make each appear brigher.
A way to soften this is to instead hang a wall of fabric or curtin using a rod system on top of the mossy green wall. If you use a brown sheer this will cut back some of the intensity.
I also think soft fabric next to exposed brick makes a great and very appealing contrast.

I've used draping fabric over walls next to exposed brick in a loft. It turned out stunning. Very classy looking.

Answer 3

Drywall is pretty cheap for what it does. You can use construction glue applied to the brick to hold it in place. It will be quicker, easier and more satisfying than painting.

Answer 4

i could start up via consulting your municipality for the via-rules surrounding outdoors fires. in many cities they're banned or limited and it can be a shame to place a great sort of artwork right into a challenge purely to have some fire respected or via-regulation inforcer make you're taking it out.

Answer 5

You've got a brick wall and you want to cover it?????????
It's considered very desirable.
I'd think twice there.

Answer 6

seal them first , then primer, the stone , then paint, using latex
paint