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 think it is a good idea to simplify (aka reduce) the number of elements and make the elements of the installation relate to one another… So following that idea, how about if you try some brass edging around the mantle shelf. Schluter edging for tile is available at many places and if you created a test mantle shelf that had the brass as part of it, then the brass fire screen would not look so out of place. A strip of this material is about 20 dollars. Fixed onto the edge of an oak board would be pretty easy, wouldn't compromise the underlying stone (which is pretty nice), and would maybe deemphasize the brass fire screen (which imo is the problem) which may be very expensive to replace, with nice alternates. An out of the box idea would be to figure out how to have the brass frame from the screen removed and then sent out to have it modified either with fresh plating, in-sizing with design (think hammered copper), or replacing with a different scaled frame. Ornamentation could be added to the corners by way of sheet metal screws or rivets that could create a nice distraction away from it's lack style. By the way, it is not to say that the previous owners failed by choosing the screen, today we have many more choices.

It doesn't look "blue" to me but true white is a cool tone, you have trim that looks to be in the yellow family and the walls I can't tell if they're yellow or green toned on my laptop. It also looks very top heavy with the fireplace being so much lighter and all the trim and cut outs in your wall. Are you or your husband good with woodworking? If it's in the budget and you're willing to put in the work I think doing a more craftman style fireplace would look nice in either a light oak or cream colored.

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?