20 Jan Fireplace Stone Facelift

Before

After with a taller hearth

Recently a homeowner approached us to give their family room fireplace a stone face lift.

The fireplace is located in a large two story family room with windows on each side. The original fireplace was nice but lacked a “wow” factor, something the homeowners were desiring after they saw a picture of some stonework done in a magazine photo.

One of the biggest challenges posed to us by the homeowner was creating a taller  hearth in front of the fireplace as the original hearth was flush with the hardwood flooring. To do this required raising the fireplace box but more importantly, and challenging,  raising the flue pipe. Because fireplace flue pipe cannot be cut  for code reasons, it left only one option and that was to raise the flue pipe cap 10 inches higher into the outdoor chimney cap. The chimney cap was large enough so the flue pipe being raised did not extent past the top of the cap. The other option would have been to replace the entire flue pipe at a much greater cost.

Once the fireplace box had been raised and the gas supply valve altered for the new hearth height (the keyed gas volumn valve is located through the hearth down into the floor), the stone work began…but not before one very important step: dust and stone protection.

When stone work is being done in a finished home, rather than a new construction home, care must be taken to insure that: 1. Dust is contained and 2. The existing hardwood floors and windows are protected.

To contain dust a plastic “hood” was constructed and installed wall to wall. This would have been much easier if the room would have been one story but because it was two it made it a bit more challenging.

To protect the floors two layers of construction paper and 4′ x 8′ plywood sheets were layed over the paper to protect the floor from stone falling during installation. The protective plywood was set the width of the room and 16 feet away form the existing fireplace.

The stone work was the true artistic side of the installation as artisan’s methodically pieced together each stone individually to created a beautiful fireplace surround and interior chimney finish. The stone used was Tennessee river rock.

In all the project took about a week and a half  including raising the fireplace box.

For more information on this job or other remodeling projects please feel free to email us at [email protected]