Mercer Home Solutions Great article! Its fun to see fireplaces in areas of the home other than the living room.

kennedytarheel Love them all; I'd have a very hard time choosing just one!

dessert Any suggestions for a more traditional look including a mantel, for a modern gas fireplace?

curllee What about granite? I've seen some impressive photos here at Houzz where whole slabs can look better surrounding a fireplace than they do on a kitchen counter top.

John Whipple - By Any Design ltd. Great Article. I have built a load of fireplace features over the years and would like to add to this piece that every firebox is unique. Each fireplace will require a certain clearance to combustible materials.

Make sure these are followed and meet with your design.

Also some tile choices can alter do to the high heat. The tile around the top and immediate sides can get very hot. Make sure your tile can handle this extreme heat and test a few tiles before installing.

We built this a few months back - a traditional site build fireplace. The mantle brackets where original but the rest is all new. I love the look of these cast iron faced Valour Fireplaces.

The TV is still to be mounted...

JW

jfricher It was nice to see the different styles, but found myself looking for more. There are so many different fireplace styles and this article I found seemed too high level and pigeon holed a material to a specific style. We just completed our remodel project and used reclaimed wood in a modern setting.

Eco-Strip If you have an old, wood fireplace mantel and surround, how about renovating it? Strip it down to bare wood, varnish or paint depending on the style of the room. But do it safely if pre-1978 home likely with lead-based paint. Speedheater infrared paint remover uncovers the gorgeous, original wood. Once you see that, you may not want to paint over it.

Fine Art & Portraits by Laurel Two aspects are often overlooked: placement at eye level and scale of the fireplace to the rest of the room. Many of the examples in this article read as too small in relation to their setting. This can be easily masked by framing in a color, usually dark, similar to the interior of the fireplace. The dining room had the height right, where it can actually be enjoyed, not looked down on.

Design Studio -Teri Koss This is a recent project that we just finished using a single slab from Glass Recycled. The result was amazing! Teri Koss, Design Studio

custom-tiles.com Here's a great idea one client had - opens up the space by adding a picture which recedes into the distance. Custom printed tumbled marble tiles were inserted into a niche above the fireplace mantel - the image source was a photo of a Japanese garden the client had taken.

Bowden Carroll Design We had some "left-over" granite from the slabs used in a recent kitchen remodel and as we had opened the kitchen up to the family room, we used the left-overs around the 3 sides of the fireplace opening, thereby linking the two spaces.

Villa Terrazza Patio & Home Important on the image with recycled wood, and to reiterate a point raised by an earlier poster: Clearances to combustibles must be followed! The owners manual of the specific fireplace or insert will clearly specify clearance to combustibles. wood is combustible. metal, stone isn't. This is why a border of non-combustible material (like tile or granite, or brick) within a wood mantel is such a popular idea - and can be made to look traditional or contemporary by styles and materials selected.

jfricher Thanks Villa for the concern and point of clarification. The clearance to the reclaimed wood and the insert were completely followed per manufacturer specs. The surround is composed of steel beams, backer board and then the wood face is

linbar We had very large Travertine slabs added to the area around the fireplace, the adjoining wall and around the back wall of the fireplace which is a wall in the dining area.

ALPINE CONSTRUCTION id like to have this in my living room

Realstone Systems This is one of my favorites with stone leading from the inside to the outside

cfperiodoc Thank you for showing a large variety of materials. Does anyone know if one can use porcelain floor plank tiles placed in areas where one would use stone on a fireplace surround. I am also looking for purple marble. A stone cutter once told me there was such a thing and I think I saw it in a house once, but no one has any idea of what I'm talking about ( traditional white marble with purple veining.

custom-tiles.com Not sure if I know what you mean. But if you have a high resolution picture (good quality, not a 'web page grab') of what you want, we can print it on ceramic floor tile.