Updating Our Fireplace with Simulated Stone

We renovated our house and one component of our renovation was updating our fireplace. In this post, we will show you how we updated our fireplace with simulated stone and brick.

Below are pictures of our original fireplace.

Demolition

This picture shows the fireplace after we removed the wood molding around the fireplace and after we removed the carpet.  Check out that ugly floor! Oh my!

Neal removed the drywall over the fireplace. Notice that to open up the living room area, we removed the partial wall to the right of the fireplace.

Install Durock

Our next step was to install Durock cement board.

Install Simulated Stone

Next was to “butter” each stone with thin set and stick to the Durock.

Mortar and Installing Brick Soldiers

The mortar is piped in the cracks. Hence, you can see the mortar between each stone in the picture below. The mortar is brushed once it sets. In other words, the mortar starts to harden but is still a little soft.

The picture below shows the brick soldiers mortared in place.

Here is a closer picture. In this picture, the mortar between the stones has not yet been brushed.

Make Flush Hearth Using Bricks

The next step was mortaring the brick in a hearth. Sorry, I don’t have a picture of that in progress.

Final Update Fireplace

A brush smoothed the mortar.

Next, we installed the television.

Click here to see the outdoor fireplace that we built from the ground up in which we used the same simulated stone.

Don’t forget to Pin this for future reference.

Let us know if you have any questions or what you think about updating our fireplace with simulated stone by commenting below.