A step by step guide to installing a thin brick veneer project in your own home.
It’s crazy looking at this before picture now and seeing how very BLAND our living room used to be! We built this new home and told the builders to leave the fireplace. They didn’t offer very appealing “custom” options in our opinion so we vetoed out of having to demo their work to then do our own and instead left the canvas blank for our own DIY work!
So, first things first how did we start off.
We started with a vision and with a plan for an end date in mind. The project took about two weeks for us to finish, working off and on, nights and mornings, and during our baby girl’s nap times. (and taking pregnancy breaks for me.) The square footage of brick that we placed sealed and smeared in those two weeks was about 106 sq feet. We wanted it done by our Thanksgiving dinner that we were hosting and we finished the night before! Phew!
Now, for research… We got the best base of knowledge on how to lay the brick and start things off from the amazing blog Vintage Revivals and her tutorial on how to install a brick veneer wall. Though this was a little (or even a load different) because it’s a fireplace “chimney”, reading her blog gave us the confidence to really OWN this project.
She recommended two things that saved us so much money and time!
- First, she suggested we start off with a grid on the wall so you don’t lose your place and get out of sorts with your brick placement. She recommended a laser level, which we got, but didn’t really use. I just took a yard stick and our level and made markings up the corners of the chimney and then across at places.
- Secondly, she said to check local masons before you buy. Luckily, we have a website in Utah called KSL.com that posts classifieds that I quickly hopped on to find if anyone was selling thin brick. I saved literally $1000 by buying local instead of Brickweb or Colonial Collection which were both on Amazon. This was a steal for us cause we had such a large space to cover! If you have a smaller space to cover, check out Colonial Collection or Brickweb, they have beautiful patterns and great reviews with project pictures.
My own take with buying local though, you can’t choose the color if you’re getting it cheap! So we had a new challenge of creating
