WANTED: New Fireplace Facade And Hearth

We finally did it, y’all! And I am OBSESSED! Our fireplace got a face lift! It’s not quite done yet, but I’m too excited not to share! When we first bought our home, I loved that it already had a fireplace but hated how it looked! I thought we needed an all new fireplace facade and hearth. Check it out.

Disclaimer: In order to continually bring you the best DIYs I can, I get commissions for purchases made through links in this post at no cost to you! Thanks for being here supporting Big Brick Beauty!

Ew. Simple. Plain. No character. Wires hanging down. Just not my style, I wanted something grand and dramatic. I wanted this fireplace to be the focal point of the room. So I started pinning and looking for what strikes my eye. What do I love? And of course my husband immediately says stone! Floor to ceiling.

I began researching stone and what we would need. I came out with more questions then answers. Where would we get stone? Would we need to grout? Would the drywall hold up the weight of the stone? Then I found the solution to all of my questions in 1 simple product. Airstone. You can find Airstone at Lowes and they have 3 different color schemes to choose from! Best of all, the simplest installation process imaginable. You grab a box of stone and a container of their adhesive and get to work! This stuff is AMAZING. And while unfortunately this post was not sponsored by Airstone, I loved their product so much when I needed to do a second fireplace at my moms house I reached out to them! And to my surprise they agreed to sponsor my second Airstone creation! Check that one out here!

First task was demo! We removed the old mantle first and were surprised to find a beautiful hand carved seascape behind piece of press board that was nailed on.

We removed this carefully and although it’s not my style we believe it is original to the house and have plans to use it in the basement later! Then, we removed the rest of the moulding on this wall including the one around the fire place and the baseboards. Next, I painted the wall floor to ceiling in the same dark grey as our master bedroom. I did this in case there was a gap between the stones, I would rather see grey then the blue that was there.

Our next task was the hanging wires. We did NOT have an outlet on this wall(hence the extension cord/surge protector in the photo above). This was my biggest pet peeve. I wanted a clean look and hanging wires did not give me that. We began scheming and came up with a few ideas (extension cord run between the stones or a behind wall kit like we used for my moms bedroom budget reno) But I didn’t LOVE either one of these ideas.

The next option was to hire an electrician to put an outlet behind the tv. I called around and had someone come out and he quoted us $800! This was WAY out of my budget just to remove some wires! But when the electrician explained how he’d do it, my husband, who’s very handy and has extensive automotive electrical training, he figured he could do it himself! And that’s exactly what he did! Luckily we are in the process of a basement reno so we were able to run the outlet up the wall from the basement. This outlet did not cost us a penny! $800 SAVED that can be used to update our fireplace facade and hearth!

Then, we made the decision to build a hearth. If you look at the previous photos of our fireplace, it is a zero-clearance propane unit that’s flush against the wall. To achieve the look we wanted we knew we needed a hearth. We used the 2x4s from the walls we removed in the basement. And built a box frame.

Then we cut cement board to fit and mounted it to the frame.

And we had our raised hearth! I am really glad we took the time to add a hearth and I love the shape we chose! This gives me an additional space to decorate and really makes it feel more grand and high end!

The next day when my husband was at work the stone process began! I started with the face of the hearth and laid stones 2 high. I used corner pieces on the corners to give it a finished look.

Then I started on the rest of the fireplace wall. My first solo decision was how to place the stones around the fireplace unit itself. We purchased both corner and stright stones. Here is the corner piece. This gave it a natural stone look.

And here is the straight piece. This gave it a more clean, finished look.

I decided I liked the straight pieces best. It gave it the clean cut look I was going for. I decided on using the corner pieces where the walls met and straight pieces on the face of the fireplace, opened 2 boxes(one of straight pieces and one of corner pieces) and grabbed the Airstone adhesive and got to work!

I chose to open all the packs of stone in a box then work varying tones as I went along. One thing I loved about the Airstone packaging is that each tone is wrapped individually in color-coded plastic. This makes variation super easy! Airstone states the stones can easily be cut with a hacksaw but we used our circular saw and it worked very well! I went along laying stone after stone, careful to vary sizes and colors until the entire left side was finished. We chose to leave a gap at the bottom for our hearth topper.

Then I began working my way across. This was a little more difficult because I wanted to keep my lines level and straight but the middle pieces began to sag downward. I solved this problem by tightly folding a few pieces of paper and wedging them between the fireplace vent and the stone. This did the trick and held them in place until the adhesive cured. Then I worked my way down the right side with the same application process. Curved stones where the walls meet and straight stones along the fireplace metal. I cut stones to fit as I went along to make sure everything was a tight fit with little to no gapping. This also helped me keep my lines straight and level.

I continued laying stones all the way up the wall until I got to the tv mount. I stopped here for the night and removed the paper in the morning.

The next day our new tv mount arrived. The mount we had mounted on one single stud and we did not have a stud in the middle of the wall. This made our tv off center with no real way to center it. The new tv mount we purchased mounts on 2 studs and offers more flexibility as to where you can mount the tv. My husband mounted the new tv mount and I continued laying stone around it and up the wall.

We made our way up the wall and when we hit the ceiling we had to start making angled cuts. As opposed to trying to find the angle and get a “perfect” cut I found the easiest way was to grab a piece of paper and a pen and trace the angle we needed by folding the paper into the space. Then we traced each piece of stone using our template and cut to fit. This method worked fabulously for us!

We purchased this mantle from Amazon and it included the corbels! Then, mounted it to the wall. You can even drill through this stone so mounting it was a breeze! One thing I would say is note where your studs are AHEAD of time. I found our stud finder did not work on top of the stone but we knew where the studs were so drilling through the stone and mounting the mantle was no issue! Here is all decorated for Halloween! Check out that new firestone facade and hearth!

And here it is in its entirety partially decorated for Christmas!

What a dramatic transformation! I am so happy it so far! I HIGHLY recommend Airstone for any interior project and you can even use it on exterior surfaces with proper adhesive! The next step in the process will be to add the to the hearth and called this project complete! Stay tuned!