I just posted some pics of our painted brick wall/fp on the fp makeover thread--maybe they will inspire you to paint your brick (or convince you not to! LOL)......

I really need to make a decision about this soon as we're about to pull up the old carpeting in the room with the fireplace would like to whitewash it first if it won't mess up the ability to tile right over later, so really hoping someone will know/have tried. - Thanks!

Oh, that looks lovely but unfortunately a bench is out since there is not enough width between the wall and a window for it to make sense (you can see the edge of the curtain in my picture above). It's also a difficult living room for furniture arrangement since there are two double width door openings, one from the hall then one from the dining room with sliding pocket doors. The third wall has the fireplace and built in bookcase and the fourth is almost all window (but no direct light unfortunately). The idea of a second bookcase, I agree, would add more symmetry to that wall but I'm imagining it will be on the expensive side and we're trying to keep this low budget (hence the idea to whitewash). If I understand correctly, you feel we can't whitewash without painting the bookcase and mantel and even then you feel we would need to add something (bookcase or bench) to the opposite side of the fireplace. One other idea we had was to leave the fireplace unpainted but add an oak board that we would stain the same color as the mantel to cover up the top three rows of bricks (including the vertical ones that stick out) making it less busy. I worry that even doing that, it won't be enough. Finally, what about adding a surround in wood? I'm supposing if we do that we would have to paint the mantel and bookcase a similar color, correct? And there would still be the problem of symmetry. I should mention that there is a lot of oak mouldings throughout the house. Some of these we have painted already as they were just too dark and with over 100 years of soot and dirt were going to be too difficult to clean. We did leave the mouldings of several of the doorframes and the pocket doors to the dining room in the natural oak. There are two built in oak china cabinets in the dining room which is why we were trying to preserve the oak bookcase. But the more I see pictures of painted bookcases, the more I'm tempted to paint ours. Here is something quite similar to ours. What do you think?

Looking for advice on how best to get this travertine fireplace to match the rest of updates in the house. Ideally I’d like to keep the stone look as the outside of the house has limestone, but don’t want it to just look painted over. Pictured are two views of the fireplace & the view from the kitchen (backsplash not yet installed but will be a subway tile with a ripple/wave to it). Thank you!