Schmearing a fireplace can positively change the way your fireplace looks – our reason was to brighten up our room! When we moved in, we wanted to update this fireplace. It’s in our family room, and we wanted to keep the cozy look of stone (which matches our exterior stone), but wanted a different look.
Here is how we’ve had it for a few years, after Ryan updated the mantle to a new beautifully made mid-century model wood mantle (which we describe how to do here).
And just to show how much this brightens and modernizes the fireplace, here is the original when we moved in, builder grade mantle.
We did some research on how best to over-grout (also called Schmearing, where you completely cover the stone or brick). Here’s how you can do it, too, for a quick weekend warrior project.
1. Prep and Protect Your Surroundings
Schmearing can be messy. It’s a little like playing in the mud — inside. Blue tape your mantle and walls close to the existing mortar lines being careful not to cover it. Blue tape your flooring (carpet in our case) as close to the bricks as possible. Lay down lots of plastic tarps — it helps to place a canvas tarp or heavy floor paper over the plastic so it doesn’t move around.
2. Have at least 1/4 inch space in your Mortar Lines
Our mortar was thick in places so we used a chisel to cut out a wee bit of the existing mortar to make space for the new mortar. We kept the mess down by having one of us hold the vacuum to stop bits of old mortar flying through the room.
3. Get Ready to Schmear
Have a bucket about half full of warm water and a grout sponge ready. Have some rubber gloves, a spray bottle, and a garbage bag to catch the blue tape. You’ll also need your gallon bags and scoop that you’ll use to get your make-shift mortar piping baggie ready.
4. Mix Mortar to Proper Consistency
Start with small batches. You are aiming for a consistency that is a tad runnier than peanut butter but thicker than pancake batter. I usually start with a little water in the bucket to control dust. We experimented some on the right consistency for our application method (see below — baggie!), and slightly wetter worked for us. Scoop some powdered mortar into the bucket and mix without power to keep the dust down. I mix batches that filled about 1/5th of a 5 gallon bucket as this will fill about 2-3 baggies. Be careful as a little water goes a long way to modify the consistency.
TIP: You can change the color of the mortar by mixing two colors together. Use a measuring device to ensure that you can maintain the same mix ratio for color consistency.
5. Apply Mortar using a Gallon Baggie
We found that if you wet the area you’ll apply mortar to first with your spray bottle, it helps keep the mortar from falling off while we applied it. Fill your gallon baggie with mortar, cut the bottom corner, and gently squeeze it to apply the mortar over the existing mortar. You can also reinforce your baggie using duct tape or masking tape. Caution here – our baggies opened up from squeezing so much, so be prepared for some spillage (and see “prep tips” above). Use a damp sponge to “dab” the mortar into place – this is really important – Dab don’t drag.
We were a few feet into the project and starting to think we’d made a mistake taking on this project until we discovered the “dab method”. Some other posts I’ve seen suggest a wipe, brush, trowel, shim, paint stick, etc. to push the grout or mortar in, but a damp grout sponge is the easiest. Clean your sponge as needed.
TIP: Dab the mortar with a sponge to even it out. This is by far the easiest method for spreading mortar that we found. Make sure to dampen the surface before applying mortar.
After you dab and have the mortar laying correctly, pull the blue tape away. We didn’t want to wait for the mortar to dry and then have the blue tape a permanent part of the fireplace, so pulling when wet was the trick for us. Gentle dab back over where the blue tape was and you will have a nice clean line.
6. Rinse, Repeat, and Perfect
It took us about 5 hours to do our fireplace. We ended up repeating steps 3 to 5 three times. We spent about 45 minutes wiping the haze from the stones to make sure they weren’t white-washed, but if you want to create more of a lighter stone or true Schmear look, you can cover your stone with a haze and leave it to whiten your stone.
You will have some time to check your progress and make corrections to areas that you’ve already done. To change the texture, you can experiment with dragging different brushes over the mortar. I would do this 15 minutes or more after you’ve dabbed. Just do a small inconspicuous section as you’ll have some time to fix it.
7. Enjoy
That’s it! A few hours of your time, about $50 in materials, and you have a fireplace transformation to be proud of!
Materials You’ll Need for this Project
- Blue tape
- Large Tile and Stone Mortar
- Grouting Sponges
- Mortar mixer (as a drill attachment or separate)
- Drill
- Buckets
- Plastic tarp and canvas tarp
- Gallon plastic bags, margin trowel, and scissors
- Protective gloves (waterproof is best)
- Hammer and chisels (screwdriver in a pinch)
