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Cutting stone comes with a number of safety hazards. First and foremost, if you’re not comfortable with the equipment required to cut stone, including blades and grinders, you could easily injure yourself. The heavy machinery also poses a risk to your ears if you don’t wear proper ear protection; similarly, you need to wear eye protection to keep debris from irritating your eyes.

However, the biggest risk from cutting stone comes from the stone dust. When breathed in, stone dust can be a huge hazard to your lungs. Always wear a face mask when cutting stone to prevent inhaling stone dust, and thoroughly clean the work area when you are finished.

To avoid injury, we recommend hiring a stone-cutting professional, rather than attempting this job yourself.

A fireplace is, by definition, an enclosed space where you burn wood or other fuel for the purpose of generating light and heat. A firepit burns wood and is much less expensive to build, but they aren’t technically a fireplace as it isn’t enclosed. An outdoor oven—commonly outdoor brick pizza ovens—often uses wood as fuel, but its primary purpose is to cook food, and you’d rarely just burn wood inside them for warmth or aesthetic reasons.

If your old bricks are in decent condition and you have the space to store them where they’ll be protected from the elements, keeping old bricks is often worthwhile. You’d spend anywhere from $70 to a few hundred dollars to have them removed from your property, in which case you won’t be able to use them for future projects. Holding on to old bricks in good condition means you can use them later for other DIY projects, potentially saving yourself some money on disposal and new materials down the road.

You can turn a red brick white through a process called whitewashing. Whitewash isn’t a stain but rather is made from water and white latex paint. Adding more water to the mix will make the solution look lighter when applied, and adding more paint will make it look more white.