Brick.

 

 

Pretty simple title for a post, funny really seeing as this particular task hasn't been. We have a rather large feature fireplace going into the new house....well, it's really a fire surround. We are actually having a gigantic beefy logburner instead of an open fire (energy efficiency and all that jazz) but we'll be giving it the open fire treatment with a full brick chimney....kinda like the phot below...but instead of whole bricks we just need a 'slip' which is 20mm of a brick. So it pretty much becomes a tile.

 

 

 

Seems easy enough, brick isn't exactly hard to get hold of, brick slips on the other hand...not so easy. After calling almost every brick distributor in Christchurch, it was made abundantly clear that cutting brick slips is a reasonably unpopular task, up there with pulling teeth and watching paint dry. It was also looking like a costly road to go down and there is a big 'road closed' sign on that road by the way. But we'll talk about the budget later (when I have a wine in my hand).

After all the research, we've decided to go for second hand bricks and cut them ourselves....and ya know what? I find that waaaaaaaaaaay more exciting and I actually quite like watching paint dry, because I happen to be quite lazy sometimes and I get to just sit there watching. So, that's fine.

It's actually got me rethinking the kitchen backsplash.... I'm thinking I'll use bricks there as well, but left in their natural state. I still HAVE to paint the fireplace white because it's been in my head since before I had an actual floorplan and I'm not giving up on it!

 

 

 

 

 

I actually love both white painted brick and old red brick equally so it makes sense that they both get a see in (brick equality). And using the second hand bricks is a step in the right direction for my desire to make our new home look a little less new if ya' know what I mean.

 

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

 

Pic links were all sourced from Pinterest, if anyone knows if they came from somewhere else originally just let me know, I'm not super Google image savvy.