Austin reacts as the woman goes through her process, pointing out that the caulk she uses is for tile and is not safe to be near a fireplace, and that the paint she uses is not an oven primer. “Watching people paint their fireplaces makes me physically uncomfortable,” she says as she watches.
The original poster then fought back, responding to the commenters on their video and apparently shading Austin himself. “I got a lot of comments from unquote ‘experts’ saying I shouldn’t have painted it because the chimney is going to get so hot it’s going to create toxic fumes,” he says in a rebuttal video. He then he wears a thermometer to show that the bricks near the fireplace have not been heated up to the maximum safe limit for paint, which is 200 degrees. (She did not respond to BuzzFeed News DMs asking for comment.)
So who is right?
Russ Dimmitt, director of education for the Chimney Safety Institute of America, the certifying body for chimney sweeps, says that painting over a fireplace is almost never safe, but his main concern is that the paint will trap moisture and damage the brick. “As an industry, we recommend against painting brick as a practice due to the potential to cause issues with the longevity of brick and mortar,” he told BuzzFeed News.
Seeing the rise in popularity of painted fireplaces concerned Dimmitt so much that he took to a few televised DIY shows to try to alert them to the problems. “They said, ‘It’s TV, don’t worry about it,’” he recalled.
However, not all building professionals view a painted fireplace as a serious disaster. Austin Jenkins, a home inspector in Tennessee who gives tips on TikTok as Inspector AJ, he told BuzzFeed News, “Painting a fireplace is relatively safe.” And he added: “I mean, I painted my fireplace, if that says anything. He pointed out that an international building code that specifies that there should be nothing combustible within 6 inches of the fireplace opening likely refers more to wood trim and other materials than paint.
Austin is not a hardliner when it comes to not painting his fireplace. He just emphasized that if he does, he shouldn’t use latex paint (which is, at a certain temperature, combustible). “If they’re going to paint it, I recommend an earth-based pigment like a lime wash, something non-combustible,” Austin said. “The other option is to use oven paint or high-temperature paint. That’s fireproof up to 1,200 degrees.”
In fact, he’s done duet videos of house flaps that used oven paint and gave it his stamp of approval.
