Installing A Brick Slip Fireplace – Kuci Design Brick Slips Review

 When I was designing the living room renovation after the house extension, I knew I wanted to create a warm and cosy room, somewhere to retreat to in the evenings. I wanted texture, lighting and warmth in this room, but I needed to add this into the room, as it was plain and lacked character. 

Living Room Before 

We had a little fireplace that we installed when we moved in here about 7 years ago. It was a 1960’s stone fireplace, we ripped this out and built an oak beam fireplace. I love this and wanted to work around it. The fire always confuses everyone, as it’s an electric one that is just sat there and plugs into the wall! 

What We Started With 

So this is the space that we started with, we need to keep a vent here for the chimley to keep it aired, so this has to stay. The slate was here before, but we just removed the edging strip for the laminate flooring, as we were installing carpet, we could butt it up against the slate. 

I can across the idea of brick slips whilst on Pinterest and loved the look of them, it ticked all my boxes for adding warmth and texture to the room. 

Kuci Design Brick Slips

Kuci Design wanted to work with me on this project and kindly gifted me the bricks slips to complete this. 

Kuci Design brick slips come in a large range of colours, so it’s worth picking up a sample of them to check the colour is right for your interiors. You can select 3 or 5 brick slips sent as a sample, and it gives you a great idea on the colours. 

We went for the Kuci Design Autumn Blend brick slips which come in a range of dark chocolate brown, to a cream colour. 

What I loved about Kuci Design brick slips was being able to pick what ones you want. If you would prefer your selection without the brown in, or less of that colour, you can request that with them. 

They arrived boxed like this, we had a couple of breaks in them but this wasn’t a problem as we could use them as an edge brick that needed to be smaller anyway. 

Installing Kuci Design Brick Slips 

We’ve never installed brick slips before! So took some time to look at the best ways to do this, and what products to use. Kuci Design does sell the correct adhesive and mortar for pointing. I like their colour guide on the website to see which colour you prefer for the pointing. 

Just like tiling, spend some time beforehand planning how the tiles are going to lay. Where is the middle point, we use a laser line for this as it gives you a perfect line to follow. 

As this was a small space we were able to plan out how the brick slips were laid out, what colour scheme and making sure we didn’t have certain colours in each space. Use the floor to plan this out, it makes such a difference to the final look. 

We put the adhesive on the wall first and did a couple of layers at a time, and worked our way up the wall. If you have any corners to go around, you can purchase corner brick slips.

Pointing Brick Slips 

This was the end result of the brick slips once we’ve finished sticking them to the wall. It’s ready for pointing now, something that was a little overwhelming to start with! It’s not like grouting tiling, and you need to be much neater and not just spread it everywhere and wipe off! 

You want to use lime mortar for this, as it creates that lovely chalky look and a rougher look to it. Kuci Design does a range that comes in a few different colours. 

You can also add it in a few ways, with a trowel to slide it in the gaps, a gun or the way we decided which was a piping bag. A bit like cake making!! Then smooth it out to make it nice and smooth. 

As it dries it lightens up, so don’t panic when it first goes on! 

Final Look 

We are so pleased with the final look, it gives some interest to the room and the fireplace area. 

Adding Lighting To The Fireplace 

We didn’t just want it to be dull in the evenings, as during the winter it will be dark so early, so having lighting in the fireplace creates a lovely warm feeling to the room. 

I also didn’t want big bright lights in this room, so needed to add lots of softer lighting to the room. 

We are big fans of smart lighting in this house, so we choose to add the Philips Hue light strip to this fireplace. All you need is a power socket nearby to power it, but you can then set it to a timer, pick the colours, and control it with your other smart lighting. 

We were able to thread the cable through the fireplace pillars as they are only wood and plasterboard, and then plug in around the side. We should have brought the light strip forward a little so it didn’t hit the top bricks as much, but we’re really pleased with the look and how it turned out. 

I hope you liked what we did with the fireplace and our first time trying brick slips. Let me know if you give it go! 

You can purchase the brick slips over at Kuci Design brick slips, we used 1sqm of Autumn Blend for this project. 

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