Haven't used the German smear technique but have seen photos of it. It can look quite good. Once it's on though I won't be coming back off just like painting. If you do use the technique please post photos. Good luck!

Here are more pics. The room is 21x20’ and in the basement. It is our pool table/workout room and also has a mini mudroom for our kids shoes and coats since one of the doors is how you enter the house from the garage. The ledge halfway up the wall is where the foundation begins.

All over America, it seems people are covering their wall-of-brick fireplaces now with pallet wood, etc. When we tackled ours in 2005, we just used drywall and created a traditional wood surround painted white like the other woodwork. But if you really want it to look like stone, go for it!

I like the stone, it’s just too dark. I think it would be a lot of white if all that Brick was white with all the cabinets (they are probably 40” from the ground).

The mantel there will never be artfully decorated, it’s a man cave in the basement. We are planning to add black glass doors to the fireplace too.

When doing German smear you need to power wash the brick and clean it so you wont get bleed through changing the color of the mortar. It is possible to clean the brick without a power washer but you'll need the correct chemicals and to clean the brick by hand very meticulously.

The brick needs to be wet when applying the mortar as well. Clear out the room and cover everything to clean your brick. be sure to not let excess mortar land on anything that isn't brick if it sets you wont have a easy time getting it off if ever.

I ended up painting it white. The painters used a rag so there's variation to each individual brick and some have more paint than others/texture shows through so its not stark white.

In hindsight, I wish I tried painting just the gaps (but there is a deep gap, the bricks are a little 3d? the grout is not flush with the bricks, they extend slightly forward).. sit would have bene a little weird.

I dont hate it. Over time more of the brick has shown through too. It brighens up the room a bunch. We got a black and glass door which really improved the look of the basement.

We did an addition to another part of the house and did a gas fireplace there and that gets daily use Nov-March for us.