Painting a Stove, Mantel, and Hearth in Antique Colors

4 Materials
$50
3 Hours
Easy
The front room at our old house is where we can escape demolition and sawdust from the many on-going restoration projects. The painted gas stove from Harbor Freight keeps us warm on cold days and is the heart of the room. See an archive of our projects here.
Take a look at how we turned a room in a run down old house into a warm and pretty space by painting a gas stove, a mantel, and even stained the hearth.
This type of stove requires no vent because it burns fuel efficiently. It's a warm chocolate brown finish with gold details, but it didn't always look this way.
This is the same wall many years ago. Pink woodwork, bricked fireplace opening patched with dirty concrete, and a mantel that we tried to make work, but it just didn't fit.
We covered the stove while we changed the pink woodwork to a color that looks like creamy butter …
… but the bricks on the hearth were dull and lifeless even when cleaned and polished. And, the black finish on the stove didn't seem to fit with the new color scheme.
The carved mantel which fit better was lime green. It didn't quite fit over the stove, so we boosted it with ordinary pavers from HomeDepot. We used four pavers, two on each side, staggered by an inch to form mini steps.
We'd never heard of chalk paint, so we used a mixture of latex colors to create this raw honey color for the mantel. This was the day the floors were nearly refinished. We celebrated with lilacs on the fire screen.
We used ordinary acrylic craft paints to embellish the carvings on the mantel. This mantel doesn't get blazing hot while the stove operates. When you install a stove, be extra cautious and check with an expert to make sure you're using it safely. We only use flowers on this screen when the stove is off.
To embellish carvings with turquoise paint simulating verdigris, be random with your patches and work the color into grooves. We avoided the flat areas and concentrated the turquoise only on carved areas.
We transformed the lifeless brick hearth with one coat of MinWax Wood Finish. Provincial is a warm medium brown. We used a toothbrush and foam brush to apply the stain. No matter how we cleaned and polished these bricks before, they were dull and tired. Now, these are easy to clean and look rich and glowing.
StoveBright Spray Paint is a wonderful product we look forward to using again. Spraying a stove or appliance can be a scary commitment, but StoveBright was richly pigmented and easy to use. In no time at all, this stove went from flat black to chocolate, in a color called Redwood.
Look at all the amazing color options. We can imagine using Green Illusion and Copper, or Mojave on stoves too. We masked the firebox and the brass handle at the bottom, and were finished with the spraying in about ten minutes. You'll need more cans if you are doing a large stove … or a blast furnace. icon
Later we embellished the details with Liquid Leaf. We wanted to use a high quality metallic paint since it would come into contact with heat. – not a plastic acrylic or latex. We applied this with a small disposable brush and it has not been discolored by the heat at all.
With flames in the cold months, and flowers in the warm, this room is now a cozy retreat year round. -- Stephie McCarthy
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Stephie McCarthy
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  • Jessie Jessie on Jan 27, 2020

    Beautiful ! I am undertaking a similar project in a few months.. Tell me please about the spray paint for the stove? How were the odors? I'm planning it for March and it will likely be too cold to keep windows open and such,, but im having a hard time finding a brush grade paint in the color option I'm looking for.. thanks !

  • Carrie Schubert McKenzie Carrie Schubert McKenzie on Mar 10, 2020

    Where does one find a little wood stove like that?

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