Dear fellow decorators, Thanks so much for all your responses! I knew I could rely on you guys. Thank you very much for the inspiration pictures, "jejvtr." I absolutely love them, and the look depicted in all three of them is pretty much spot on what I was envisioning. However, I am realistic and I know that our end result will probably not match what is in these pictures, because yes, the stretches of brick to the left and right of the main flank of brick are uneven. Also, I could remove the hearth, as you suggest, "egganddart49," but there are electrical outlets on both sides of the hearth, so I am certain removing the hearth would require electrical know-how, and DH and I are not up to snuff with that. I don't mind having the fireplace as the focal point, anyways-it's inevitable, and with a nice large painting above I think it can look nice. "Jakabedy," our house is actually a two story traditional colonial built in 1940. I do appreciate the MCM style, although our family room is not that. It was an addition consisting of a family room built on a concrete slab with a new master on top. I think whoever did it just took various elements popular at that time (floor to ceiling fireplace, large patio windows, wooden paneling, etc.) and mashed it all together. Cheers, Anna

I'm a little confused. Your drawing says tile but your post says slab. Did you change plans from tile to slab after the drawing? Also, your drawing shows a dimension of 5'2" across the bottom which equals 62", but that appears to cover columns plus surround width of 6" + 44" + 6" which equals 46". Granite fabrication pricing can vary a lot depending on where you are and also from fabricator to fabricator. Are there any edge details or such that cause extra fabrication time? Our fireplace surround is very similar in size. The material for the surround is left over from our kitchen remodel and we bought a small slab for our hearth. Our quote is just labor - $600 for fab and installation. It is very simple - no fancy edges. 8" wide, but that probably doesn't make much difference to the quote. Ours is also taller - 54" - and a bit wider - 52". Our surround is being fabbed as 3 rectangular pieces - a top and 2 sides because of the size of our remnants. A fabricator might charge more to fab and install a similar surround as one piece. There would be more chance of breakage I think and it might take an extra installer to handle the weight of the surround. I think that it would have cost more if we used the fabricator who did our kitchen.

My extended family needs to replace an old wood burning fireplace insert at our small summer cabin at Lake Tahoe. We are trying to decide between another wood burner or a pellet insert. We love the look and smell of our old fireplace fires and wonder if the convenience of pellets would outweigh that. We have a gas wall heater and only use the fireplace occasionally for both warmth and ambiance. The cabin is used by various family members for a few days to two weeks at a time mostly during the warmer months of the year. I’ve watched YouTube videos about the use of pellet stoves and wonder if the cleaning and maintenance would be an issue for the family. Any advice or opinions would be appreciated.

We are wanting to tile our fireplace with brick to make it more of a beautiful focal point. However, I want to find out how we would tackle the very narrow point where the wall sticks out and the very narrow point to the right and left of the fire place (both places referred to circled in pics). I appreciate any insight or tips anyone has!