DIY Concrete Fireplace in ONE WEEKEND | Building Plans

*This post is sponsored by The Home Depot and contains affiliate links

Last year, while we were building our new house, you guys went nuts for our MASSIVE two-story fireplace in the living room! To be honest, I love it too. I've always had my heart set on a sleek, concrete fireplace. Pouring and finishing almost 8 yards of concrete in the middle of the house wasn't a practical option. I needed to find a DIY option that was actually affordable. After months of research, I discovered a product made by a company called Concreate. They make lightweight wall panels made from real concrete and are totally DIY friendly.

Although we featured the fireplace build in Episode 9 of #BuildingModernOnABudget, we had a lot of different projects to talk about in the same video, so we weren't able to go into as much detail about the building process as we would have liked. We've received TONS of questions! My literal job is to help you guys find the best information and help you through your DIY projects. If we can do it, so can you. We decided the best way to answer all your questions was to build a second concrete fireplace.

We built an almost identical, baby fireplace upstairs in my boy's game room. We followed the same steps and used the same materials. This new fireplace is a much more manageable, 5ft x 9ft size. And the best news... WE'VE MADE PRINTABLE BUILDING PLANS!

I know, Christmas is only 4 weeks away, but I promise, there is still time to build a new fireplace. Check out the full build video below to see the whole process, and keep scrolling to get your own set of printable building plans.

We used the same, 2' x 4' polished concrete wall panels from Concreate that we used on the big fireplace (in the color "Natural Grey"). I LOVE THEM! Surprisingly, they are actually super easy to work with.

They can be cut with a standard circular saw, outfitted with a masonry blade. They can also be drilled and sanded easily, similar to wood products.

On this build, we got to try out a couple cool new products. You guys know I'm a Diablo girl. I have Diablo blades on every single saw, and I have never found orbital sanding discs that work as well as the Diablo ones. They recently launched a Reusable Hand Sanding block and I'm a big fan!

It consists of two densities of foam. One stiff side, good for going to town on a flat surface, and a softer side, which is good to flex around curves.

The Diablo sanding block is designed to work with the new Diablo SandNet reusable sanding sheets. I've used SandNet discs on my random orbital sander for years, so I'm stocked to finally have the lightweight, mesh technology incorporated into larger sanding sheets.

If you haven't used SandNet products before, you've got to try them out! They are completely different than good ole sandpaper. They feature a clog-reducing net design which reduces dust build-up. It's easy to clean and reuse multiple times by simply shaking, vacuuming or rinsing the sheet when it starts to clog up. We used 80-grit and 120-grit Diablo SandNet sheets to smooth the edges of the Concreate panels before we attached them to the fireplace and they worked like a champ!

Ready to see how the baby fireplace turned out!?

In the downstairs fireplace, we were trying to stay on a tight budget, so we used a fairly inexpensive electric fireplace that we purchased off of Amazon. It's okay, not great. This time, Dimplex reached out to us and wanted to provide a 50" IgniteXL electric fireplace.

OMG! It's a completely different animal. It is BY FAR a much more superior product. The IgniteXL is definitely much more expensive than the first model we used, but it's worth every penny! In person, the flames look almost real, and the heater unit is almost silent. If we ever build another fireplace, I'll save up to be able to purchase a Dimplex.

As I mentioned before, the new fireplace is in our upstairs loft. If you want to see more details about us building the loft, as well as finishing my favorite bathroom, make sure to watch episode 10 of #BuildingModernOnABudget.