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Renovating Flooring Fireplaces

What to do with hearthstone when polishing/staining old floorboards?

6 years ago

I moved into my Victorian home six months ago and am redecorating all of the rooms. They are in different states but mostly pretty good condition.

At some point over the last century the dining room has had the entire fireplace and chimney breast removed. I discovered this when the walls were stripped and re-wallpapered over the weekend.

My next job is to get the floors sanded and varnished. Yesterday I peeled back the (hideous) carpet and discovered a large concrete slab, presumably where the old hearthstone used to be (or the hearthstone itself? I have no idea).

My friend suggested tiling over it, which I'm not opposed to in theory. My problem is that not only is the hearthstone itself 50cm deep, but since the chimney breast no longer exists, it's a further 40cm away from where the wall now is (with well-fitted stumpy bits of wood in between the wall and the back of the concrete). So that's almost a metre out, in a room which is only 2.8m wide anyway and which I am using as a dining room - i.e. the table in the centre of the room, so the hearthstone will be right underneath the chairs, and the edges would be a trip hazard. It wouldn't really matter in any other room since the furniture could be rearranged to accommodate it. But in a dining room, raising it in any way (i.e. tiling) simply isn't practical.

Has this completely scuppered my plans to sand down the floorboards? Will I need to shell out for new wooden flooring that covers the entire floor? Or is there some way of removing this slab and its stubby surrounds, and filling the gap with reclaimed floorboards, without causing irreparable damage to the house?

There is a bit of chipboard in place of some floorboards but only in one corner. The remainder are, I believe, the original floorboards from 1876.

I'm very open to creative suggestions, but whatever happens, I refuse to have carpet in the dining room.

The hearthstone is under the carpet on the left of this photo.

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Looking at it, I think it's a mishmash of periods. the mantelpiece and overmantle is characteristic of a late victorian/edwardian style. We are more used to seeing these with vertical side panels of decorative ceramic tiles and a cast iron firebasket raised off the floorlevel. the actual ceramic glazed fire you have in there appears possibly to be anywhere between 20s & 50s, probably a replacement because the original burned out (assuming it's in the main living room it will have been a main source of heat for the house). So the question is, what do you love and what do you hate about it? Because it's not working for you right now. Usually edwardian fireplaces with an overmantel (and edwardian/victorian furniture in general) comes apart into sections. the tricky bit is finding which sections! But I'd imagine the entire overmantel with the mirror could be taken off leaving the mantelpiece intact, albeit with peg holes that would need filling on the top of the mantel at the back. Usually there were wooden pegs and holes for placement. If you are on a very tight budget, and assuming you don't want to keep the rather lurid carpet, simply keeping what is there, and adding a fender would work (as someone suggested above). You can get low level ones in brass that are extendable to fit relatively cheaply, or there's vintage ones that range from low level right up to having padded seats. If you intend to actually USE the fire, then it may be possible to pull up the 20th century ceramic tiles (if that's what they are) lay a screed underneath and then relay the tiles a bit higher so they are proud of the floor level. If any are broken it might be possible to relay them at the edges where they are less in the way - but at the end of the day, open fires are messy and what you really need is a slab of clean smooth hearthstone to make it easy to keep clean. Alternatively if you don't like early 20th century mashups, then you could (carefully) take out the fireplace, sell it on (someone would love it - personally I don't like the murkiness of that sort of fireplace ceramic colourwise, but I do recognise it's a nice and unusual example of the genre) and buy a replica more suited to the surround. You can get some rather nice ceramic edwardian style tiles for the sides. Have you tried to light the fire? it may be the hood is necessary if the chimney doesn't draw well. Or it could just be an aesthetic choice a previous owner made without considereing how the fire actually performs. As people have said above, you can paint it. Whatever paint you use, make sure you aren't totally knackering the wood underneath in case you want to have it stripped back to wood in future. The suggestion of hanging a picture over the oval mirror is a good one. Though I suspect with a different less instituttional carpet and the fitted cupboard gone, a judicious choice of plants or ornaments might make the whole thing recede into the room as a whole and be less 'in your face' at the end of the day, it's actually a time and labour intensive decorative heat source, so if you aren't going to have an open fire, and it's not a listed building, consider selling it and getting rid completely. It's a mishmash anyway that doesn't work so well aesthetically, though individually the separate parts of edwardian/ mid 20th century do have charm. but together? ouch you are living with some dearly departed's poor design choices! Which I suspect are not going to be so easy to marry together. Though as people have said above, painting it white is going to help a lot! My final thought is that you've got off lightly with that overmantel with a plain oval glass! When I was a kid we had an edwardian house near manchester, in what was the day nursery, behind a baize door, on teh first floor, had an overmantle with a plaster of paris insert that weighs 25kg with rather terrifying fairies playing in the moonlight as it's subject. The house was due to be demolished so we took the plaster behemoth with us. It's currently hanging in my hall and scaring all small children that pass by!!! 40 years on I still can't decide if it is actually totally hideous or so ugly that it's beautiful. Mostly though I just don't want it to fall off the wall and kill one of the cats! Here it is in all it's fugliness. Framed in the 1980s in somewhat ungracious proportions to just top off the general weirdness of it!
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