This Twin Peaks client wanted to lighten up the room. The existing stone fireplace and hearth were dark and heavy, and they dominated the space. The plan was to encase the old fireplace and give it a clean, white plaster look, without the cost and mess of tearing it out.
Why lighter works
Dark surfaces make a room feel smaller and heavier. A fireplace is usually the largest single feature on its wall, so its color sets the tone for the whole room. Taking a dark stone surround to a smooth, light finish opens the space up and lets the fireplace read as a sculptural shape rather than a mass of stone.
Most of the work is preparation
A smooth plaster finish can’t simply go over rough stone. Every bump and ridge would show through, and the coating would be uneven in thickness. So the work began with planing out the shape of the fireplace: deciding exactly where the new, true surfaces would sit, and what had to go to get there.
Lasers and levels were used across the fireplace and hearth to map the true planes and find every high spot. Then every protrusion on the existing stone was ground down with an angle grinder until nothing stood proud of the new surface lines. It’s slow, loud, dusty work, and it’s what makes the difference between a finish that looks like plaster and one that looks like stone under a coat of paint.
The finish
With the shape established, the old fireplace and hearth were encased in a polymer-infused white mortar. The polymer helps the mortar bond to the stone beneath it and resist cracking, and white mortar gives a bright, even base with the soft, hand-worked texture of traditional plaster or stucco. Crisp edges and flat faces, built over a surface that had neither, turn an old fireplace into something that looks designed for the room.
The result
The fireplace is still there, still solid, but it now brightens the room instead of weighing it down. That’s the value of resurfacing over replacing: keep what’s sound, change what shows.
Thinking about updating a fireplace? See what we install, or send photos for an estimate.
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