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Help selecting raised hearth stone materials

11 years ago

We're in the process of building a new home with a masonry wood burning fireplace and need some advice selecting hearth stone materials. The fireplace will be faced with Eldorado stone and will have a raised hearth. We've been considering Cultured Stone hearthstones (their color and texture better matches our stone than Eldorado's brand). However, we're concerned that logs dropping on the stones, pokers, etc. will nick through the painted surface of the hearth stones fairly quickly (revealing the gray concrete underneath). We're told nicks can be re-touched with paint but this seems high-maintenance. We've considered stained concrete but have heard it's crack-prone (not sure why since hearthstones are made of concrete as well?). We don't like the tiled look as it's a rustic style fireplace and want the hearth color to be fairly uniform and neutral in color so as not to conflict with the stone. What are anyone's thoughs on granite or quartz if we can find a color that works? We've looked at natural stone too but run into problems with varying thicknesses, lengths, and patterns. Thanks for any advice, photos, etc!

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Comments (4)

adie.k
11 years ago
hi. granite would be much better than quartz to use for your hearth. quartz doesn't like a great deal of heat.a polished surface to the hearth makes cleaning alot easier, but if you got a flame textured or dolly pointed slab; it would work better with your rusic stone finish. have you considered having the base made from the same material as the breast. if so, make sure you have the minimum required projection infront of the fire to meet the regs. And lastly, look at the hearth temp of the appliance- do you need the inner hearth cut for expansion?good luck with your burning
m2day
Original Author
11 years ago
adie.k -- Thank you for your reply and encouragement to consider granite. We have been looking into it and selected a fairly dark 'honed'/ antiqued finish granite that will work well with our style of fireplace stone. It'll be nice to not worry about the hearth getting chipped from rough fireplace use. thx
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Actually, I think the term you wanted to used was 'raised firebox' but I think we all understood your question. ;-) By 'no mantle' and 'no surround' do you mean that the firebox will be installed flush into the wall with painted sheetrock coming right up to the edge of the firebox on all sides? Like this image ... I think maybe a simple concrete bench made that fits flush with the bottom of the raised firebox and is the same width as the box or 36 to 24 inches wider than the box would look nice. Maybe in a style like one of these: Concrete can be faux finished to coordinate with other finished like marble, granite, etc. And, if you ever decide that you no longer want the bench in front of the fireplace, a concrete bench, even one with a faux finish, can find a new home in your garden.
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Thank you so much for all your ideas and opinions. Thankfully the builder told me we can wait until the house is framed to make a decision on it. Whew. He even suggested using cardboard to mock up our furniture arrangement- for the fireplace decision as well as electrical outlet and air vent decisions. I really do love working with our builder. As I keep trying to find the fireplace style I lIke, I keep gravitating to more formal white wood mantel and surrounds with matte black tile/stone (not sure what the material is). I guess I like the idea of how a raised hearth functions but I prefer the look of a hearth that's flush to the floor.
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Our house sounds similar to yours. Our kitchen connects with our familyroom, too. Our kitchen cabinets are dark cherry & the granite is Giallo Ornamental. The floor in the kitchen & familyroom is white oak, finished in a medium brown. Our fireplace hearth is the same level as the floor. We used a brushed cream marble on the surround & hearth, so the finish is matte. The fireplace mantel and the wood around the fireplace are Navajo White---about the same color as the marble. We like the cream marble against the cream color wood. We considered using a brown marble for the surround & hearth but were concered that it would give the overall appearance of a big dark hole in the fireplace area.
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sue_ct
11 years ago
You might look into soap stone also, if it fits your decor. My brother had his done in granite tiles, which are less expensive than slab granite. Visit a good large stone yard/warehouse and see what types of stone they recommend. Is honed marble or marble tiles to your liking? Black marble can be nice, and there are dark greens, etc., also. I was amazed at the stones I was unaware of when I was visiting granite and stone yards for my kitchen.
sue_ct
11 years ago
Sorry I just reread your post and saw that you don't want tiles. I do remember seeing some honed stones, including limestone, that might interest you. Again, a stone yard or design center is a great place to get info. Don't know if one is available around you, sometimes a contractor can refer you if you are using one, but if you can get in contact directly with a local stone fabricator, you can usually pick from remnants they have in small pieces left over from larger jobs that did not use an entire slab of stone, at a greatly reduced price. The trick is finding and getting to talk to the fabricator directly. I was able to do that when I was ordering my kitchen counter.

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