We just installed some new hardwood bamboo flooring to replace our bunky old laminate. The new boards were 50% thicker than the old stuff and the underlay was thicker again so we ran into an issue with the fireplace being too low. We didn't have the tools or experience to deal with scribing and profiling the wood blocks around the stone, so we decided to build a hearth.
How should I go about this? We are thinking a raised hearth is the best method but our space is slightly narrow. I could easily pull off a standard rectangular profile quite easily with my abilities and tools as they are but I have a strong preference for a rounded front for appearance and for maintaining walkway space through our entrance.
Couple things to note. Of course it's obviously still a construction zone with the boxes of flooring that are aclimating for use in other rooms, missing baseboard trim, missing mouldings, etc. The walkway beside the chair is the main entrance to the house for guests which is why we don't want to crowd the doorway too much by making an oversized hearth. We are actively looking for something to replace the brown chair and coffee table with, plus there are some decorative pieces I didn't move back into place for the picture (area rug, plants, lamp, etc)
An example of what I think would be nice (keep in mind I am not good at styling things)
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Rectangle is fine for hearth, that's completely up to you (I like the hemisphere style you posted more tbh).
As far as things go, laying hardwood is a lot harder than doing a hearth. You're just going to frame, lay some cement board, and then "tile" it.
Edit: You will also want to figure out the trim style around the walls and hearth too, you might have to replace what you currently have (looks like it's still not on the wall yet). If you don't like quarter-round there's some different looks you can try too.
I really like your suggestion of adding shelves underneath, but I don't know if the firebox is high enough to make it work.
I also came across this other style that we quite like, it would involve a little more trimwork to add a new "base" to the existing legs on the sides of the mantle (as in to go on the top of the tiled hearth). The nice thing about this one is it's well within my scope, the part I'm nervous about with the rounded one is I don't know the best way to scribe, cut, tile, etc the curvature (on both the front faces and the top). Matching the stone should be pretty easy, they are just the concrete style stick on pieces. Ignore the full resolution thing on this, when I try to get to the image source it leads to some horrid website I can't be bothered to search for it on.
I like the stone look better, I don't much care for wood on a hearth (though it tends to be easier to clean than stone sometimes).
Wrap around is better though.
As for curving it, there's a lot of tutorials on how to do a curved stone face, you'll probably have to do a bit of masonry work to get it to look right. The slab can be any surface, some people like the concrete look, but it can be raw stone too.
Thoughts on this? To the left and under the light switches we were thinking a bench seat to add extra seating in the main area for when we have extra guests over.
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Unless you can cut into the drywall behind them somehow, I don't think they'll do you much good.
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If I'm looking at that right, at the top is the depth of a 2x4, and there's a sink/cabinets on the other side the rest of the way down.
This. If you are going to place a bench that will most likely be wider than than the shelving space, you might as well just replace the counter top above the sink with a wider one and have shelves deeper than you are going to have with the current setup. This way the bench and shelving space can be aligned up front and you can utilize the counter top better as well.
I measured under the counter and it's actually almost 7" depth to the bottom of the curve on the countertop (not to the frontmost edge). Still not much. I'd much prefer to drop the counter height and make it a flush height with the kitchen side but that's not in the budget this year.
I'm thinking if I plan it right I could design it to be a suspended style with a gap between the cabinet to the floor, it would make it re-useable when we end up dropping the height down in a year or two.
If a no go on that, considering the timeline does anyone have any suggestions between now and then? It's an otherwise barren wallspace that we need to do something with, but bar stools are not what we want.
just throw up some of those strips that allow you to move the shelf up or down.