Reader Lisa is having some trouble figuring out how to make her off-center retro roman brick fireplace work for within her living room design. She initially wanted to paint the bricks white to match the built in bookshelf next to it, but her husband is a purist and prefers his brick au natural. How can Lisa make the room more aesthetically pleasing to her and still keep the natural brick for her husband? I’m thinking she was on the right track — but needs to reverse her thinking.
Lisa writes:
Hi Pam and Kate-
I love reading your blog – it’s definitely made me appreciate my 1954 rancher so much more.
I have a retro design dilemma though, and need your help! We have a Roman brick (as I understand) fireplace that sits asymmetrically at the end of our living room with a built-in shelf next to it. Previously, there was a 1980’s fireplace insert covering the fireplace, which we just removed (yay!), but now I’m not sure where to go. All the neighborhood houses have had the brick painted white or tan over the years – I initially lobbied for that option, but my husband is very anti-paint on original brick. I also read the blog on your site about staining brick, but I’m not sure if that’s the right solution for me either (is my brick too dark for that?) We recently painted the grey on the walls, which helps ‘tone down’ the red, so I’m starting to wonder if maybe I should just live with the brick the way it is – you know, ‘love the house I’m in.’ And beyond the bricks, I’m not sure what to do to the structure of the fireplace – does the asymmetrical thing work? We could cut the bricks off the side to make it centered in the space and with the hearth, add a traditional mantle and drywall above, remove the built-in in the corner – I’ve reached the point where I’m totally stuck. Help!
Our style is definitely artsy/eclectic with a little splash of collected random collected furniture thrown in (and a couple things left over from college that need to be thrown out!) Hubby is an arts and crafts furniture builder on the side, so there’s a lot of that influence in our home (I’m still waiting on a few key pieces for this room, clearly). We also have a family/extended family of artists, so we do our best to incorporate their work into our home – which is wonderful, but challenging at the same time.
I’m so hoping that you pick my room to help with – I’d love – no wait, I NEED a fresh perspective! And I’d love to do my rancher justice – I didn’t even realize how great it is until I started reading your blog (which I stumbled across while researching shingle colors last summer). Thank you!
Lisa
My key tip: Paint the built-in bookshelves to blend with the brick wall
Lisa — I think your fireplace is related to my house. I have probably the exact same roman brick covering 3/4 of the exterior of my retro ranch. That being said, I agree with your husband — I wouldn’t paint this brick — it is really beautiful just the way it is. Instead of painting the brick to match the bookshelf, why not paint the bookshelf to blend with the brick. By painting the bookshelf a medium brown that coordinates with your fireplace — it makes the whole wall on seem like one piece — thus reducing the off-center look. To further “center” the fireplace opening, try getting a tall plant (real or fake if you have a black thumb) to put on the other side of the room. The plant will occupy some of the “extra space” on that side of the fireplace and make the opening feel more centered.
I asked Lisa — even though she just painted the walls grey — if she would be game for Pam and me to each suggest a wall color for her living room for fun. Lisa says she is always open to suggestions, so Pam and I both set out to pick a color and also a rug for the space, keeping in mind Lisa and her husband’s love for Arts and Crafts style furniture and wanting to tone down the brick. I chose a warm creamy color for their walls (similar to Sherwin Williams Inviting Ivory) to tie in the color of the brick without bringing out the red tones. The rug I chose — found on Overstock.com — coordinates with what is already in the room and also has an Arts and Crafts feel to it.
Pam noticed that Lisa had green curtains and suggested a green from a story she wrote about Arts and Crafts paint colors — from California Paints called Jukebox. I found the green rug to coordinate with this color scheme from Shaw.
Even if Lisa didn’t want to change the grey walls, adding a rug to the room would help pull it together and make it feel more finished. This hand tufted grey wool rug from Overstock.com would be a good option.
UPDATE– After several suggestions from readers wondering how the wall color would look wrapped around onto the bookshelf, some further “digital painting” was done and the following shows how each wall color would look if it were carried onto the bookshelf.
Lisa, I hope I’ve given you a few ideas on how to make your space feel more symmetrical — without painting your brick fireplace.
Nancy A says
This is a great fireplace. Don’t paint the brick! Currently, the eye is drawn to the bookcase rather than the hearth. I would simply rework the bookcase into a either a 3 shelf bookcase, or a lower cabinet with simple doors. This would create wall space and allow the eye to rest. The fireplace would feel more centered and you would have some wall space for a nice piece of your art.
JKaye says
Hi. I think I would try adding some more color to this room before doing anything more drastic like painting bookcases, walls or bricks. I already see some little touches of gold, orange and aqua blue in this room, in the painting over the fireplace, the stained glass in the window and in that basket on the hearth. I would start with some colorful pillows on the couches, maybe a few colorful pieces of glass or a couple of colorful pots holding plants on the tables, and a rug with some of those colors. If I wanted to try changing the bookshelf, I would advance to maybe just putting color inside of the shelves, such as burnt orange. The reason I wouldn’t jump right in and paint the entire bookshelf is because it looks like the rest of the trim in the room is white. So I would want to make sure how I felt about two different colors on trimwork in the room before I repainted the white trim of the bookshelf. I would get some paper and cut it to fit in the bookcase niches before actually painting, to see if I like the notion of color in there — try out several different colors.
The last thing I would do is paint the bricks, because it is the hardest to unchange. We painted over some dirty grungy dark red brick, and I don’t really regret it, but, sometimes I wonder: What if I had just picked a different wall color; maybe the original brick would have been OK.
As for whether there is too much furniture — I bet that periodically Lisa and her husband have a bunch of people over and they pull out all the chairs from the walls and have a great time together. It looks like a well-used room where people are happy, and it just needs to be tweaked a bit.
Kate says
Painting the inside of the bookshelf is also a good idea. I think a burnt orange would look nice, however — in her letter, Lisa mentioned they painted the room grey to “tone down” the brick. I’m thinking she may not be a fan of reds and oranges in decorating. Perhaps she could try the same suggestion using the green from Pam’s color scheme instead.
Yasmine says
I love your fireplace as is! I would paint the walls a similar green to the one that Pam suggested and carry that over to the bookshelf – a matte paint for the walls and gloss in the same colour for the bookshelf to really make the fireplace its own focal point. If you have another bookshelf in another room maybe you could move all of the contents of the bookshelf onto that and keep the one in the living room for period-appropriate figurines, knick knacks, etc. Right now the brown couch and chair are blending into the fireplace, so rearranging those so that the fireplace is not obstructed by anything of the same or similar colour would probably make it pop. I like the suggestion of a plant and I would put one on either side of the fireplace and embrace the asymmetry.
Kate says
I’ve just added new mock ups to show how each color would look on the bookcase as well!
Yasmine says
I like those. I think the green is my favourite, but it is also the one that really highlights the asymmetry. I had a thought that a really cool swag lamp or similar light fixture hanging on the left of the fireplace in a similar green could tie it all together and balance everything out. Something like this (which can be made in varying lengths) http://www.rejuvenation.com/catalog/products/astron-tri/configurations/508c2c2ebbddbd378f0001a3
pam kueber says
oooh, i like the swag lamp idea. although I would do a 70s one! thanks, Yasmine!
pam kueber says
Yes, I also like the idea of “mixing things up” on that bookcase. We have built-in bookcases in our living room. We need it for books… but also have carved out space here and there for decorative items. It makes a huge difference. On TV they call this styling the bookcase – and it’s a great idea! I also agree: Walls painted flat, trim semigloss.
Kim Mulligan says
I love your suggestions of painting the bookcase to blend in. I would take it a step further and try to have like shade of objects on the shelves to further blend in if the asymmetry distracts you, personally I would embrace it.
Love the rug idea, it really did unify the different things in the room.
Painting brick in my book is a sin akin to painting knotty pine, don’t do it! Might as well just have the much cheaper finish of drywall there instead. Embrace the era in which your home was built.
Annie B. says
Leave the walls gray and paint the bookcase to match the brick of the fireplace. Then, perhaps use a large starburst clock over you mantel.
I adore Roman brick in any color; quintessentially MCM.
pam kueber says
oooh, a starburst!
Diane in CO says
Yes! I agree with this post (and some others) I wouldn’t paint the brick, but my first impression in looking at the room was “the sofa is in the wrong spot!” The furniture generally needs to be rearranged, culled, decluttered if they can’t afford to replace for a more MCM look.
The fireplace is not the problem; the problem is the disorderly arrangement of everything else in the room.
Remove the turquoise thing from the hearth, remove paintings hanging on brick, add a sunburst, paint the bookcase the most-subdued hue in your bricks, take all the furniture out of the room and add it back one piece at a time, starting with a better placement of the sofa. Find another place for all the items on the furniture surfaces, i.e., de-clutter.
Good luck! Lots to consider in these comments!
Jim says
I thought the same thing… too many little tables and too many knick-knacks; generally too much clutter. And the sofa isn’t a sofa. There seems to be some attempt at making a long sofa out of a love seat and chair.
Meredith R. says
Lisa, I love your brick wall and fireplace, asymmetry and all! So I agree with not painting the brick. But what I’m really interested in is the shape/layout of your living room, which looks very similar to the living room in my 1950 colonial. It spans the entire front of the house, with the fireplace at a short end, like Lisa’s but centered. There is also a picture window similarly placed, i.e. closer to the fireplace end. What I can’t tell is where the doors are in Lisa’s room. In our house, the front door opens in what would be the left immediate foreground of the photos here; directly opposite it is a doorway to the kitchen. Then down at the other end of the room, near the fireplace and lining up roughly with the far half of the window, is a double door to the dining room. I have really been wracking my brain about how the furniture was intended to be arranged in this room. You can’t make the fireplace the focal point without blocking the dining room door and leaving a big old empty space at the other end. Likewise, if you put the tv in front of the window, the couch would block the dining room doorway. (The tv is not our main concern; it’s not big, but it’s there and the kids watch it.) To complicate matters further, there is no hallway between the front door and the kitchen — the room is fully open to the stairway on the other end, but with an implicit hallway there. I feel like there are supposed to be two seating areas – one on each end of this long room. But I don’t know quite how to do that, given the restrictions noted! Does anyone else have this issue and what have you done about it?
pam kueber says
Meredith, do you want to submit this as a Design Dilemma — see link at the bottom of the story.
Meredith R. says
Thanks, Pam. I may do that in the future. Hoping we are staying in the house but possibly not.
TappanTrailerTami says
I’m with both Kate and Pam, and then myself! I’d paint the bookcase…I also want the fireplace to be more of a focal point…..you have a husband who is woodworking friendly….so:
I’d paint it for now….but I would have your husband make a floor to ceiling bookcase, but instead of being flat, have it angle on to the other wall, and my TV would go on it (like clear out shelf two/three and put your tv there), and then I would have a mantle that went over the fireplace and carried clear across the bookcase. Essentially, I’d end up with a partial bookcase, entertainment center at that end of the fireplace (better with a semi angled cabinet) and then arrange furniture to focus on the fireplace/tv cabinet/bookshelf combo since they are on the same wall.
PS – I like the green scheme!
Nancy says
Rather than a tall plant in the corner, how about stacking art work vertically, floor to ceiling, to balance the bookcase?
John says
Ps I hadn’t seen the brick shelf under the fireplace so the TV won’t work in that corner. Under the window seems like the best place.
AtomicHipster
lynda says
To me the cream/yellow walls and the arts and crafts rug look nice. I don’t mind the fireplace to one side of the room. The bookcase may look best painted the same color as the walls so it does not stand out but makes the end wall not look so heavy. I would remove the furniture in front of the bookcase and instead put a very long a more substantial looking credenza for the tv. I think the tv should be mounted on the wall and since the credenza will be wide, decorative items can go on the sides and even in front (under) the tv. Balancing pictures on either side of the tv would give more weight to that side of the room so the fireplace does not dominate. I agree that the loveseat and chair should be switched out. If there is money, I think I would look for Morris chairs for tv watching. I think they are very comfortable. They can often be found on Craigslist. This would fit in with the craftsman look that she seems to be going for. I would not prefer a tv in front of the window because when you wanted to open the drapes for light, the back of the tv would be exposed to the outside, and I do not like the way that looks. I agree that the tv above the fireplace is awkward. Maybe a metal sculpture above the fireplace would lighten up the look too.
Lisa says
It’s funny that you mention a Morris chair – hubby is refurbing one for this room as we speak. Hopefully it’ll be done soon! I agree – it’ll look much better than the overstuffed recliner.