German Smear Fireplace DIY

When we bought this house our entire living area was a tad dated. 

The dark brick fireplace wasn’t exactly out of place among the shag carpet and wood paneling. (Shoutout to the random sound system hole in the wall…. that gave a direct view into the bathroom.) 

It wasn’t really the look I was going for so we quickly updated all of it, but the fireplace was put on the backburner. I didn’t want to paint it, but I didn’t know what else to do with it! So it just sat there.We recently got new furniture ^ and that fireplace was killing me. 🙄  (Ignore the random collection of pumpkins.)

So long story short, I ran across Nelly, over at nellyjoyce blog.com, on Instagram, and her fireplace is FABULOUS! ❤️ (Not to mention her amazing fall decor in comparison to my pumpkin hoarding.) 

She has a short tutorial posted in her saved stories, and it seemed like she was basically winging it with a friend. So against every ounce of my overplanning being, I decided to do the same! 

You can watch my own tutorial on Instagram! My account is @sweetteatribe

I used:

• scrapers
• 5 boxes of Glass Tile Premium Thin-Set Mortar
• bucket
• whisk
• water
• Gallon sized Ziplock bags
• paper towels
• gloves
• scissors

1.) First clean your brick! I only vacuumed mine, but you also need to scrub any visible blemishes. I missed some spots of crayon, and it left greasy, colored areas once the mortar dried. 

2.) Mix up your mortar. I used a whisk, but you could just use whatever. I didn’t follow the directions on the box. I mixed 1 box of mortar with about 6 cups of water to get the consistency I wanted. If it’s just a tad to watery then let it sit for a few minutes to thicken up. *WEAR GLOVES. Before you even start mixing up the mortar put the gloves on! This stuff somehow gets everywhere.* 

3.) Put mortar into ziplock bag. Squeeze into a corner of the bag and then snip the point off. *Tip: Try to get most of the air out when sealing the bag. It’s a pain when you have a good line going and then an air bubble shows up.*

4.)  Squeeze the mortar into the grout line of the brick. Overfill the lines the way you have enough to spread across. You’ll notice here that if your grout is to thin it slides out of the line. Let it sit and thicken up for a while if you don’t have additional mix you can add to speed up the process. If you have minimal overfill from the grout line it gives more of a splotchy look. If you want the appearance of exposed brick then you have to commit and apply it generously!  Start with a small area of just a few bricks and fine tune how much you need to apply according to your preference! 

5.) Once the mortar is in the grout line, drag your scraper in all directions to really fill out any gaps or air bubbles in that line. Hopefully you’ll have a lot of overfill (as we talked about in step 4) and you’ll swipe that excess across the surrounding bricks! 

6.) Step back and look at it! If a few bricks in a section look like they need more then don’t be afraid to use your bag or scraper to directly apply mortar in that area. Simply place a blob and then scrape it to blend in with the surrounding brick. 

And that’s really it! If you decide to try it please send me pics in the comments or tag me on Instagram! I’d love to see your work!