Make nonworking fireplace point of interest
If home is where the hearth is, then what happens when the fires can’t be lit? The fireplace and hearth are often symbols of home, offering warmth, light and, historically, food and protection. They have been central to our dwellings since they were first constructed.
Not all fireplaces remain sound enough to host a fire, however. And as disappointing as that may seem, an unused fireplace doesn’t have to be a missed opportunity for a grand design.
Josh Young, a D.C. artist and designer, says fireplaces not only add architectural value to a room, but they also ground and center a space. “It really allows the person who enters a room to focus in” on the center of a room, Young says, “and it’s usually through a fireplace or mantel.”
Rather than ripping your hearth out or letting it languish, read on to see how manageable DIYs, bespoke lighting and simple tweaks, such as adding a mirror, can transform your black hole of unused space
into the star of the room.
1. Make it a book nook
Young filled a nonworking firebox with books in 2017, and the internet went crazy for it. West Elm invited him to style for it, and the fireplace full of books became “a whole thing on Pinterest,” he says.
Replicate his look by lining the bottom of the firebox with magazines to manage the soot-stained floor space, then stack your firebox with books of various sizes. “It can be a bit of a jigsaw as far as existing books you have or ones you may need,” Young says, but the result can act as a bookshelf. “There were many times I would reach in and pull out a book and read it,” he says. “It became almost like a library within itself.”
2. Make a faux log stack
The styled log stack is a popular way to decorate an unused fireplace, but Morgan Spenla, founder of craft-kit company Crafter, came up with a brilliant way to fake it: the faux stacked facade.
Spenla chose not to fill her firebox with logs, she says, because “we didn’t want bugs or critters creating a home in a warm space full of wood.” Instead, she painted a thin piece of plywood with leftover chalkboard paint and glued wooden rounds of varying thickness.
She says her fireplace had a channel inside that kept her board upright, but there are countless ways to get the board to stay vertical depending on your fireplace’s design. She used a nail gun from the backside to secure the glued rounds, because they kept sliding down.
When complete, it had the look of a firebox filled
with logs, but it still had space to store items. Little pieces such as holiday decorations or even a safe would work well. A few woven baskets filled with throw blankets to create warmth and coziness completed the makeover.
3. Re-tile with style
Re-tiling your firebox is an immediate way to enliven and update the look of
your fireplace. Rachel Lovell, a dried flower artist in Bristol, England, chronicled the process on her Instagram. She had a professional remove the gas fireplace, then re-tiled the firebox on her own. Through YouTube, she learned to tile in a herringbone pattern, using paper to mock up her space beforehand to ensure her Please see HEARTH 16