Gas fireplace makeover: Bring new life to your tired propane fireplace

Propane gas fireplaces are the easy (and more energy efficient) alternative to traditional wood burning fireplaces. But after a while they can start to look tired and out of date. The good news is that it’s fairly easy to give your gas fireplace a makeover so it looks good as new.

You can change the look of your gas fireplace with paint, new logs, and new accessories to bring it up to modern standards.

Table of Contents

• Ways to customize your gas fireplace
• Before and after gas fireplace makeover
• The story behind the gas fireplace makeover
• Propane fireplace makeover: Step by step

Ways to customize your gas fireplace

If you don’t like the color of the inside of the fireplace, or if the paint starts peeling or flaking off, you can actually repaint it really easily using high temperature spray paint

In addition, you can buy new logs, new embers, all kinds of accessories that totally change the look of your gas fireplace. You can replace the logs with glass, or you can choose logs that look like birch or oak, or any number of other options.

Here is the fireplace accessory website we used to purchase most of our new accessories. You’ll see that there are a variety of price points and styles available. We went fairly high end because we really wanted the fireplace to look realistic and classy. And it was still much easier and more affordable than replacing our current fireplace with a new one.

• We purchased redwood high temperature paint. This looks SO MUCH nicer than the off white that we originally had. In fact, I think this was the most noticeable part (and the cheapest) of the makeover. I actually think any dark color would probably have worked, including black. But the redwood also pulls some red/brown from the granite surround and it looks so nice.
• We upgraded our crappy looking logs to hand painted faux oak logs. These also made a huge difference, though these were pricy.
• Finally, we added some sand and lava rock to look like ash and burned pieces of wood.

Before and after gas fireplace makeover

Note: Before you begin, be sure to turn the pilot light off and turn off the gas line. Every stove is different, so read your owner’s manual, and if you’re not sure about something, contact a gas professional.

The story behind the gas fireplace makeover

When we were building our house 17 years ago, I wanted a real fireplace. I love the heat of wood. But our builder talked us out of it, saying that you lose way more heat than you gain with a wood burning fireplace. So we took his recommendation and instead had a propane fireplace installed.

To me, it felt a bit like cheating, and it just didn’t have the same feeling as a real wood fireplace. However, I did learn to really love the convenience of just flipping a switch and having a roaring fire. Recently, I had been thinking about removing it and maybe adding an electric fireplace instead, mainly because it was looking dated and ugly. But also because the starter component was getting finicky and was getting hard to turn on.

Just out of curiosity, Jon and I started looking into how we could fix the starter, and also if we could paint the inside of the fireplace where the original paint had flecked off. Well, that started us down a road toward a full on fireplace makeover.

So, first, yes, we could replace the on/off switch. We have a Harris fireplace and found a replacement switch (not cheap). Upon some research, I discovered that you could easily paint the inside of your fireplace with high heat paint. It turns out that Jon has always hated the light colored background of our fireplace. I didn’t love it, but it didn’t bother me too much. Jon felt like it was cheap looking and ruined the rest of the aesthetic of our living room.

With more further inspection, we also discovered that (for a price) you can change up a lot of things about your propane fireplace, including the logs, the embers, and other aesthetic pieces that can either make the fire look pretty real, or pretty lame.

Propane fireplace makeover: Step by step

We started with the new on/off switch and remote control, which set us back $180. It was becoming difficult to turn the fireplace on, so this definitely needed to happen. At this point, we had had the fireplace going on 18 years, so it was probably time.

Then, we knew we needed to paint the inside of the firebox because the paint had been peeling for quite some time and looked terrible. We went back and forth on the color and eventually landed on Redwood. Great choice – the dark background looks so much better than the off white that we had before.

It was fairly easy to paint. A few pieces we took off and painted them outside, but for the most part, we had to just put plastic around it and tape it, and open the windows for a while. It’s a spray paint with a pretty precise nozzle so it didn’t get anywhere it shouldn’t.

Then, we chose some logs. We considered some more modern looks like glass, or faux birch logs, but we have a cottage in the woods, and oak logs seemed the most natural and classy looking. There are a lot of price points to choose from, and we settled on these 24″ split oak designer plus handpainted logs.

Then we added some embers, sand, and lava rock. In the end we didn’t use the embers, because we just didn’t think they’d show up, so we sprinkled the sand and lava rocks down.

I cannot even begin to explain how big of an impact this makeover made to our living room. It looks so good, even without the flame going. It looks pretty real, honestly, and just looks classy. I love it so much.

This wasn’t the cheapest makeover ever. It cost about $750, including the new starter and remote. But it was much more affordable and more importantly, less of a hassle, than removing it and installing a new one.

I’m 100% thrilled with the results.

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