LESLIE: Yee-haw! Going over to Texas to talk with Brian about a fireplace. What’s going on?
BRIAN: Hey, I moved into a 25-year-old home and this fireplace; it looks like it’s straight out of the Brady Bunch.
LESLIE: (chuckling) OK.
BRIAN: (chuckling) It’s got stone from the floor to the ceiling and the stone is very nice but it’s got this black mortar that makes it just look kind of dated. And so what I’m wondering is, how can I change the color of this mortar to make it something a little bit more friendly?
TOM: Hmm. Sounds to me like a job for some very strategic painting. (Leslie growls) Because, you know, getting light mortar to be darker is something that could be stained.
LESLIE: That’s something that can be done.
TOM: That can be stained. There are mortar stains that will do that but to try to take a dark mortar and make it light …
LESLIE: Would you have to use some sort of heat-resistant paint?
TOM: Probably not, because there’s not that much – the outside surface of the fireplace doesn’t get quite that hot.
BRIAN: OK, so I wouldn’t have to use a heat-resistant paint, necessarily?
TOM: I don’t think so.
BRIAN: I could just paint over this mortar?
TOM: I think you could paint over the mortar, yeah.
BRIAN: Oh, well, that’d be great.
LESLIE: I mean is it worth it to saw out the mortar …
TOM: No.
LESLIE: … or does that make a giant disaster?
TOM: No, no, no. That would be a disastrous job. That would be so much work it wouldn’t be worth it. I would try to paint it.
BRIAN: OK, so I’d just go with like a flat interior paint?
TOM: Yep, exactly.
BRIAN: Alright, great.
We’ve used a product called Instant Mortar Match to change the color of the mortar on our chimney. It is a dye, so the color absorbs into the mortar and changes the color. They have a white color which could be put on the mortar first to offset the black coloring and then after that put the color on that you want the mortar to be. Hopefully I am making sense. If you call the company, they should be able to tell you if it will work for your situation.