I Love Lamp: Painted Brick

For about two months now, ever since I painted the living room built-in black, I've been meaning to paint the brick chimney behind our wood stove black as well.

Neither Steven nor I were fans of the mismatched browns of the brick, and the globby (and dusty) insulation was driving us a little nutty.

Step 1 was to take an Exacto knife to that. Which of course was totally tedious and when Steven was helping me with the high parts he managed to give himself the hugest, deepest, grossest wood splinter up his nail which I will spare you from. (He's ok now.)

Step 2 was to blue tape the edges. Step 3 to prime.

Somehow the priming took a solid hour. Like, not even a break for lunch included hour. Just an hour of jamming a paint brush in all the bricks' nooks and crannies.

Still, it was pretty satisfying to see it one uniform color!

Walked the dog, answered some emails, let that dry. Step 4 was to get out the glossy black.

It felt really BOLD going up--

But solid, in a good way. And already I was so happy to see the metal chimney of the stove disappearing into the black brick.

Step 5 was originally going to be painting the insulation that was sandwiched between the top row of bricks and the wood beam with a small paint brush which you can kinda see here--

But after giving it a quick go I realized that even if that was all black it would always look a little messy. So Steven nailed up a board that was left over from when we did the finishing trim in the upstairs hallway:

And I painted it black and BAM!

Step 6 was of course to build a fire, have a beer, and call it a DIY day.

What's that? You'd like a side by side Before and After?

And DONE.

(What is I Love Lamp? This is I Love Lamp.)