And it looks worse with the gray- white :(

You're half way there. Just paint it because it's still way too brutal in appearance. See image below.

Also either remove the mantle or replace it with something with a larger scale mantle that is more simple in profile.

Oh my heart goes out to you! Just keep going and paint the whole thing solid white. If you remove the mantle and hang a huge round framed mirror you can hide some of it and take the focus off the rest.

I agree with BeverlyFLADeziner. It's the contrast of the dark crevices that looks off. Paint it all. I would do a very dark brown or even black mantel. Only if you have black elsewhere in the room though.

I wonder if you could use some kind of filler to smooth out the facade a bit. hmmmm. That's beyond my expertise however. :(

Paint it. Also, remove all of the "little stuff" from the mantle.

Paint it a solid light color, especially the mortar lines between the stones.

Our lava rock raised hearth fireplace 12' x 8 ', was built into the wall with cement block chimney and firebox. Framed out the wall jusr beyond the deepest rock and clad with sheetrock, built new mantle surround and tiled around the firebox area and added glass fire doors. Doable. Looks classic now.

Thank you for all of the kind suggestions. I cannot believe I posted this a year and a half ago!!!

Unfortunately I still have not corrected it BUT next weekend I am renting a professional paint sprayer and painting it and making sure all of crevices are painted too. If I still do not like it then I am going to just pay to have it re-built! I have been living with this eyesore long enough!! HA HA!!! I will make sure to upload the finished results of whatever I decide to do.

And I am getting rid of the current mantel....I want something like this.

Can't wait to see it!

This is beautiful!!! Wow!!! What a change!!!!

Excellent!! You completely turned that eyesore around.

Yes....it brightened up my whole living room and the whole project was very affordable at just under $300.00!

Jackhammer time.

Lovely. Especially nice that you know you can accomplish that which you thought outside your ability.

That looks great! And nice choice in mantel! :)

Vanessa it looks Beautiful!!! Great job!

U should be very proud. :).

Looks great! We have a similar lava rock fireplace, I have been debating what to do with it. Was it a pain to paint? What kind of sprayer did you use?

Mike...just now seeing your question. It was very easy to paint once I rented the paint sprayer from Home Depot. It was the hand held paint sprayer. I think it was around $40.00 to rent it for the day. I used use KILZ primer and it let it dry overnight. I then pained it in an eggshell, Benjamin Moore's Simply White. :)

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My mom had a hideous 70’s rough brick fireplace with a stupid ginormous semi circle hearth, plus it was smoke stained and dirty, can’t remember what I used, maybe an exterior paint, painted that sucker white, just pushed the paint onto the crevices with a brush.