I like black and every room needs a touch of it. However, I would clean the fireplace well before I decided. Check with Romabio for masonry stains/paints. If you're planning for TV above it then I would paint black on the drywall too. The issue will be where to end it; wrap around the sides or not.

White fireplace with black to camouflage TV.

Modern Farm House Renovation · More Info

I am curious what the fireplace would look like with a proper scrubbing (and we will do a self clean before oaint) but it has a lot of pink tones in it which i Think are there to stay :/ Guess it was a good color in the 60s but i think it clashes with the builtins!

Thank you for the photo. i also didnt think about the tv not being centered…

You acknowledge it's an MCM fireplace, to keep it so it shouldn't be painted so your subject line confuses me. Totally agree on losing the warmth and charm when painting out wood and brick/stone. The current soot directs you away from white. I would wait until the floors are in and a modern door is on the firebox...once you paint it's the end of your options.

You just taken walls out to gain light, I wouldn’t counteract that with a black fireplace in the middle of everything. Do the floors, clean the stone, then reevaluate. If anything, I’d paint the whole thing your wall color, but it might not need painting at all.

What are you planning for the floors? How will you treat the ends? I don’t like when stone is exposed on the ends like that - I think you’re best to budget for a new surround and one that wraps the ends. Removing the end units (while probably the right decision) did open a can of worms.

Also, best to decide what you’re doing for the FP before you do floors (and the finish of the FP) needs to be in conjunction WITH the floor decision.

Remove the stone & replace with something you do like. And raise the sunken floor as part of the process.

Or go whole hog & take the fireplace out altogether. The off center firebox bothers me.

More masonry stains: www.dyebrick.com

Is taht a wood burning FP ? If not then you do not need the hearth usually with gas? So think about that before the floor goes in. As for thr FP itself I love those bricks and I need to see your style that from what I see is not MCM . So more info as to what you are striving for in style I sure hope not farmhouse but I need info. Is tah a step down on only one side ?

Some option

or

Have you considered removing it? Do you expect to use it? I removed my fireplace from my midcentry home and I’m so glad I did. I never used it nor did I want to. I wrestled for years over how to resurface it. Turns out it was boxed out below the ceiling studs and not touching them, so not load bearing. I got a structural engineer’s opinion also. After removing it, the whole house seems more open and bright. Anyway, just a thought, since you are thinking of redoing the floors.

OH NO! Please don't call 60's build as mid century! That would make me 94 years old!

Anyway, I think the stone is applied. Having carpet so close to burning embers isn't the best or safest idea.

As for the fireplace itself. The flue is over the firebox. Everything to the left was built out to make the fireplace wall look bigger to impress.

My point is to have you consider taking more of the fireplace wall surround down. You could have a look like this:

I second the suggestion to clean it and wait until the floors are in if thats real stone.

Some look to go

It looks like there is a hearth in the room behind this as well?

Thank uou to everyone that responded. i tried to reply indvidually but could not figure out how. Also, houzz doesnt work with my predictive text and there is a delay when typing so its such a pain to type on my phone.

we just finished remodeling the fireplace and the stone. dry wall is up and painted so taking more off or removing all together would be we just wasted 15k :/.

also we couldnt make it shorter and there is another fireplace on the opposite side ( a wood buring stove). they both share a chimney. we usually only use the word burning stove on the other side.

apologies for calling it MCM. we have a 60s farm house with some “Cinderella” detail on the roof so i guess im not sure what to call our house…

thank you to everyeveryone that replied!

my style has been farmhouse antique meets coastal but who knows now. sometimes i wonder if i should pay homage to the cindarella 60s architecture and bring more of that period into our home.

i often feel so lost!!!

This is the before in the first pic. the stone and chimey are massive, and thr second pic is before we painted our house but you can see the detail in the trim. what would you call our house?

In general, you will not go wrong in trying to work with the original design intent of the house. I would probably clean the stone and reevaluate. Since you appear to be changing flooring you could try to find something you like that works With it instead of Against it. Right now it seems as if it is in keeping with the architecture of the house and with the built-ins that you are preserving. There are probably a bunch of different ways to make it look better and updated if you were looking at it in isolation, but it still has to work in the context of the house itself--and I think you could easily fall into doing something too 2020s contemporary to it, which will then not look good with the other bits of character you are keeping.

I think it would be such a shame to paint that lovely stone. It looks like it needs a good cleaning and then will look fabulous with wood floors. It looks like sandstone to me and has so much character. I think it will look flat and boring if you just paint it. The fireplace is beautiful and adds a lot of historical charm.

Here are some beautiful photos of sandstone. It's probably not a color I would choose to paint on the walls, but in its natural form it's stunning.

Maybe this will help. Here are some beautifully styled rooms with similar fireplaces.

No one has mentioned the graphic tile in gray and white… it seems to me your choice for the fireplace styling was good… with the caveat that you try to co- ordinate the final color with the tile to enhance the flow…

Where will the TV be placed?

I agree with pricklypearcactus. That is my absolute favorite kind of mid century brick. It's a subtle red and doesn't have any of the elements I think of when it comes to ugly fireplace brick -- such as tan or high contrast color variations or anything.

Painting will be incredibly difficult (practically impossible) to undo. So try these things first: clean the soot and discoloration off the brick and mortar, and paint the brass parts matte black. Then decorate the room and live with it for a while. Between that and the hardwood you mentioned you are planning, I think you will begin to like the FP a lot more.

I did a rough block out of extraneous things and pulled a walnut color from the built in for the floor.

Mid-century traditional and Cinderella style homes are two of my favorite architectural types - although I don't often see much love for them on this board. If you're feeling an urge to restore or go with the era of the house, I don't think you can go wrong there - and I think as time goes on, original features (or at least features that stay somewhat true to the original materials) in homes like these will prove to be more valuable (especially as other folks remuddle the heck out of them and make their nostalgic features more scarce). In short, paint that fireplace as a last resort.

Thank you again everyone! i think uou have j spired me to clean it and see… also i like the isea of an updated fireplace screen!

and i totally understand how painting it could take away from the charm of our home and everyone is white washing things these days; hence why i wont paint our beautiful wood builtins!!

thank you!!

Katie C, I hope you weren't apologizing to me. Just kidding about mid-century because the 60's were my college years, teaching years, and getting married years! It's always a shock when I realize how old I am and how fast the years have gone.