Spray paint action!

Since we moved in I have wanted to change our fireplace.  I HATE the fireplace doors.  Dingy brass 80s ugliness.  They were installed in '86 when the house was built.  Does that make them vintage? ;) ;)

I dreamed of these for added coziness:

But they are a whopping $184 dollars!  Definitely not a part of the budget....

So, we opted for a quick, cheap fixer-uper that I saw on HGTV.  Spray paint.  Yup, thank you Sabrina Soto!  Here's what we picked up.  First, two cans of Heat Resistant Spray paint and a spray paint attachment gun.  We spent under $20 for everything.

 


First we had to remove the doors...it wasn't as bad as we anticipated (or as online lead us to believe), but it was DIRTY.  Twenty years of dirt, dust, and grime had accumulated between the brick and and door.  Ew!

The most time consuming part was cleaning the doors and taping and newspapering the glass windows.  Here are the doors after all the spray paint has been applied!  (It took two good coats).

There was a bare hole in our wall for about 48 hours...thank goodness for good weather!

Here are the afters!

Again, here is the before, before:

And after! 

I used this website to guide me, but if you attempt this yourself, here are some tips so you can learn from our mistakes:

1.  Un-installing the fireplace mount is easy, it's getting it BACK that's the hard part.  Study everything carefully when you take it apart...and take pictures if you have to. 
2. Do your hand a favor and buy the spray gun to attach to the can.  Best couple bucks I ever spent.
3. Tape carefully and expect this to take lots of time (if your doors have several windows).  Also, remove the paper right away so you can clean the glass and remove any paint that splattered on.
4. Prop your doors up do spray rather than doing it flat (I used a stool that I covered with a drop cloth).
5. No need to use primer if you used the same spraypaint I did.  Rustoleum doesn't require it!

It was a fun, pretty easy project...and I think I'm addicted to spraypaint!

Up next???  Painting (not spraypainting ;) ) the mantle white so it stand out! :)