We have been waltzing around this problem for 6 months ourselves. Unfortunately, we had all our brick facade removed first and maybe that was not even necessary. Anyway, we are going to meet with some fireplace construction people soon to discuss how to proceed. We just found this website the other day and it may be instructive, even tho the starting point had been re-covered first with wood paneling. Our wall is stripped down to cinder-block masonry and we now have discovered irregularities that our old raised hearth was concealing, so a little more prep work is needed. Good luck! Here is a link that might be useful: Re-doing the fireplace

Mine FP is being tiled right now! He is tiling around a gas insert that replaced a very ulgy old wood burner insert so we had to cover gaps. The current brick is also ulgy and not well installed. So the first warning to you is evaluate the plumb and surface level of the existing brick. Very important! My tiler is very experienced & very good and it is very slow going. The first two rows of my tile design is time consuming - basically I am picture framing the insert in rows. We are using 12" marble, but so far the design is all cuts - so no full tiles so far, except on the hearth. His order: Grout is last. Hearth first - not raised using schluter edging. Must be set(dried) before 1st row on the wall or the weight of the tile will push out the hearth tile. Very important. He is working bottom up. He built a wooden frame 1 x 4 for the 1st row of horizontal tiles above the opening (FP insert ) to rest on to set overnight. Because of the uneveness of the brick, he set ea tile and adjusted until ea was level and surface even. My 1st row was cut to around 4" wide out of the 12" tile to create that picture frame - mitred effect. The next day after fist row completely set and can support the weight of the next row, he continued around the FP opening / insert. Now, my design is alittle more time consuming in the beginning, because of the cuts & math, but he still could not do more in one day becasue the tile has to set in the beginning - so it doesn't move from the wgt of the other tiles. Today he is starting mostly full 12 x 12 tiles above the set(dried) rows , again bottom up the wall. He is using levels (ass't sizes) to insure the tiles are even against the wall, making up the difference in the thickness of the thinset. My brick is kinda bowed - unlike tile that is flat. He is using thinset directly on the brick instead of cement board - which he said would still have been a problem over the brick because the brick & mortar is not perfectly flat. My brick goes to the ceiling. He will grout last. More information then you wanted. We are extremely handy - DIYers - but decided not to tackle this project ourselves. But, I am fortunate to have a great tile setter who lives in my neighborhood, so we have waited a very long time for him. We started this project last February! Between the FP insert issues, then getting bad marble that had to be reordered, in August when he had a week to be here-we are now almost a year later. Renovating this house has taught me patience & that I am too old to do this again! Regarding the 4 1/2" tiles - we decided the floor to ceiling FP in smaller tiles overall would be to busy for us. I think it depends on the area you are going to cover. I hope this has helped you.

I honestly feel like if you just remove the tile to the right of the chimney, it will just make it look like a crooked fireplace....people will look at it and scratch their heads. At least with the tile it looks more like a design choice. It might not be your design choice, but it will look like someone had a plan that they executed. If you decide to change out the tile, look at fireclay tile. I think it would work here. Leah, like anything having to do with...well anything...so much depends on your tolerance level. There's "I can't stand it it must go yesterday" AAAAALLLLLL the way to "I love it!!!..It's mine and will become THE focal point in my house". You're the only one who knows where you are on the scale. Watch out that any stop-gap measures don't leave you with worse than what you started with, though :) If you choose to get rid of the tile and just have the drywall...you need to make sure it's not a "normal" pendant. It needs to be a kick-ass pendant. So don't replace what you have with anything featured in the Restoration Hardware catalog... :-/

it's the perfect grout color. Don't even worry about changing it. make sure your guy knows how to do this grout properly. Grout small sections, and clean up quickly (within 10 mins or so) advise him to use very little water on the sponge. Normally you would spread your grout out in large sections while using the float to press it in the joints, and then go back and wipe up. sometimes as long as 30 mins. You can't do that w/this grout. (if he does large sections and waits to wipe like on normal grout, the grout leaves a filmy residue that takes hours to clean off!. Ask me how I know this. I advised my tile guy how to use it and he didn't listen to me. I spent 2 hours using another product to remove the grout residue from my marble tile. ) FlexColor CQ has a stain resistant property in the grout, so you shouldn't have too much of a hard time cleaning. I have it in my shower.