A previous owner of our 1920 bungalow painted over the brick fireplace. My husband has been wanting to strip the paint off. He started on it this weekend and has revealed bricks in good condition. However, the mortar appears black - not what we were expecting. It almost looks as if someone painted over the mortar with some sort of black sealant, although it is possible that the mortar itself might be black. Has anyone ever seen anything like this? Any idea if it could be original to the era, rather than something someone did at a later date?

You weren’t clear if the brick mortar was colored all the way trough or not. Have you scraped back some of it to see if you get to a different color? If it is, you can always re-point the bricks to get back to the original color. Or to change the color to something more appropriate to the era.

Chgartner,

Nothing to worry about, unless of course you do not want black mortar. Our 1909 Prairie has black mortar that we discovered after removing the oh so cool mirrors that the POs screwed to the face of the fireplace! So, your mortar is most likely orginal to the house. One question though, does the mortar appear to have a glossy surface, thus indicating a possible sealent?

I scraped down an eigth of an inch and found dark grey mortar. The black surface on top is somewhat shiny and appears painted-on. My best guess is that someone painted black sealant over original dark grey mortar. Unfortunately the sealant now has stained the edges of each brick black. This sealant didn't strip off with CitriStrip, and I'm afraid that scraping will the only way to remove it. The sealant is ugly, but I'm afraid of damaging the brick with mechanical scraping.

My own 1919 Bungalow (Brick and stucco) has black mortar between the bricks, including the fireplace bricks. They, and the mortar inbetween them, are also "shiny" because they were covered with shellac or varnish long, long ago. It was the "sealant" of choice.

I was lucky enough not to have to strip the fireplace in my current home. But, several years ago, I lived in a bungalow here in the same town that I stripped a fireplace at. I used Peel-a-way, which was the best use I ever found for the product. Again--a tinted mortar, though not as dark as my current home. But, as I look around my bungalow "infested" neighborhood, I see a lot of black mortar.

Also, shellac comes off wonderfully with denatured alcohol. But--why take it off? When stripping paint, it will provide a natural separation point between brick and paint layers. Good luck.

If you want to remove the shiny sealant, I would "second" the use of Peel Away. Peel Away is the only product I have ever used that has worked better than advertised. I used it to strip 36 layers of paint and 2 layers of wall paper off a wall in one application. They make different numbers for different applications.