I am thinking of buying a house soon. The one we are seriouse about has a fireplace with light-red brick. First, is this the actual color of the brick or some sort of stain? How hard is it to paint or change the color?

 

Most brick is pre-colored, obviously, it can be painted, it would just eliminate the contrast between the mortar and the brick itself.

 

Maybe you could look into stucko over the brick, or apply fake stones or tyle over it.

 

If you find that the brick on your fireplace has been painted you might consider sand blasting it back to original. Do this before you move in as it is a little messy. If the mortar needs work you can tuck point it. If you want to change color you can put a brick stain on it or just paint it as it is an indoor application then you can also paint the mortar joints and this looks pretty cool,

 

The brick to be concerned about is the fire brick in the pit. The first house I ever owned had a fireplace that the brick on the front had been painted probally 10,000 times, only problem I ever had was that it was painted white, and at the top it had a nice dark color from the heat of the fire I kept going in it for over 3 weeks, back in 80 or 81 I think when the temp here did not go above 32* for 3 1/2 weeks, if you blast it, try using glass beads or maybe a real fine sand, but you're gonna have one heck of a mess to clean up

 

I have a painted fire place and I wish it was not . I am not willing to clean up the sand blast mess as I am living in the house.

 

Thanks for all of your replys. What if I wnted to change it to a stone veneer? Would I have to dismantle the bricks? or just lay the stones over them?

 

If you don't want to remove the paint, I think you could just glue them on with liquid nails (they're not nearly as heavy as stone), then get one of those cone shaped frosting style bags. You can find them with the concrete at Home Depot or anywhere, and use that to grout between the stones. You can pick up those little U-shaped trowels there too, to go over it when done. If the brick is not painted, just get some sand mix, and spread it over the brick. You would probably only be able to do a course at at time without hangers. If it's more than a few feet up, you should use hangers.