I love this Before & After project so much — I have had an eyesore of a builder grade, poorly tiled fireplace for years now. It was there when I bought my house and I’ve just not had time to teach myself how to retile it. But thanks to Catherine Lee, I might have figured out […]

I love this Before & After project so much — I have had an eyesore of a builder grade, poorly tiled fireplace for years now. It was there when I bought my house and I’ve just not had time to teach myself how to retile it. But thanks to Catherine Lee, I might have figured out a solution. Catherine is based in Decatur, GA, where she works in economic development.
Catherine found herself pinning, saving on Instagram, and adding to her inspiration board the same tile images, over and over again. She was drawn to the Lily Pad hexagonal tile design from Ca’ Pietra. When she bought her first home, she thought about saving for the tile of her vision board dreams, but she finally decided to take a turn and try her hand at painting it herself. “I quickly priced out the tile and even more quickly realized there was no way I could afford it,” Catherine shares. “So I decided to just go for it and paint the design directly on the existing tile myself. I had seen some faux tile DIYs online, felt inspired, and figured anything would be an improvement over the burnt red tile. I got a quart of dark grey chalk paint because I wanted the look to be matte, ...