"That should cut it nearly flush with the other brick." And make it stick out like a sore thumb. Score slightly if you must then snap it off. If you get a bad break,you can try and clean it up or get a plugging chisel and drilling hammer (small sledge) and take out the whole stone. you might get lucky and find out the stones are only a few inches into the wall and easy to remove. You can ten use the piece to fill the hole. This post was edited by brickeyee on Thu, Mar 21, 13 at 14:45

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... :-/

You could paint your fireplace, but it looks like you like orange (pillows). I would get some new artwork for over the fireplace with orange in it. Then I think I would paint the shelves white...(You have white in the kitchen) with back of them the wall color like you have now. Then I would hang some white sheers on the lower windows to soften things up.. If it still looks dark, then I would paint the fireplace or retile it with the tile you have on your kitchen backsplash if possible.

More background about the remodeling project. The living room is a sunken living room and we are raising it to level with the dining room etc. We need to raise it about 8 inches. This fireplace is in the sunken living room. Since the fireplace has a layer of brick that is raised right now and we are going to make the fireplace flush with the new hardwood flooring, we will be raising the fireplace up for about 5.5 inches (8inches - thickness of the one layer brick + thickness of hardwood flooring that will be installed). It is about the thickness of 2 layers of normal red brick and a little more than one layer of the brick that is inside of the fireplace. After raising the fireplace, the opening of the fireplace dimension will be about 24 inch tall * 36 inches wide. Will it look OK? If it is still a “normal” size opening for the fireplace, I tend to want to keep the wood burning fireplace as I can paint it white and it is still functional.