White Mantle

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, when we painted the living room and hallway, I also decided to paint the fireplace surround. It was more like: the husband ran to home depot to pick up a light switch cover and this mantle painted badly with flat cream paint drives me CRAZY every time we are watching TV, wonder if I can paint it before he gets home (the answer to that btw is NO).

But since we already had everything taken down and moved to the center of the room, I went for it anyway. I used Behr’s Ultra Bright White (the base color) in Semi-gloss since that is what I had on hand. Since it is trim and I was using glossier paint which tends to show streaks, I used Floetrol as an add in. Theoretically it makes your paint less likely to leave brush marks. I’ve had pretty good success with it, so I use it. (That link is for a gallon, I bought a quart a while ago and still haven’t used it all up, so just buy the quart… but that will show you what the bottle looks like).

Here is my mantle in the middle of the first coat of paint. It is amazing to me how NOT WHITE it was. My baseboards already didn’t match this very well. They are whiter than this, but not BRIGHT white.

And after two quick coats of paint, the mantle was looking SO FRESH AND SO CLEAN! I like that it made the gray pop a little bit more. It did bring out the cream in the tile a bit more, but it doesn’t bother me.