Painting a marble fireplace

[aredinburgh]

Hi there,

We have a peach marble fireplace we're going to paint over - can't afford to get rid of it any other way.

Been looking at how to do this properly. It looks like a good sand (at 80grit?), followed by Bullseye 123 and then an eggshell top coat would work well.

My other half has found Annie Sloan chalk paint and wants to try just painting over the top with no prep.

Finally, the gas fireplace is still operational and might be used over winter. I don't *think* we need a fire retardant paint as the marble surround is 'outside' the fireplace. Is this a mistake? Is the paint liable to crack?

Thanks!

 

[Robbie uk]

There were many (bast@rd) marble fireplaces fitted to a lot of the early terraced houses from the early part of the century that were painted from new. This type of marble was not as nice to look at as it had shells and razor clams shells in the marble. No prep was done on them apart from a couple of undercoats and a top coat.
They had coal fires in them. Fire retardant paint wasn't around then.
And yes it was called that !!!

 

[aredinburgh]

Just to update this post for others..

I tried just painting the polished marble with Annie Sloan chalk paint. Nae use whatsoever! It just scratched off and looked a mess.

I scraped it off, sanded the fireplace down and added a primer coat of Zinsser 123, and then painted over with 2 coats of paint. Looks amazing now and rock solid.

 

[dcdec]

Zinnser recommend bullseye 123 for ceramic tiles so reckon it would be ok for marble. You've got to use a high grip primer as marble isn't porous.