Finished Fireplace

I finally grouted the fireplace tile last night and now I can show finished pictures of our work! But, first a little background.

When we bought our home 2 years ago I knew that there were missing tiles on the fireplace hearth and was anxious to do something to complete the fireplace. We had thought about ripping out all of the tiles and just replacing them all, because I honestly don't love them. We call them our cow tile, and I am sure you can see why. Well, after thinking more about it we realized that we needed to try and keep as much of the original things of the house as we could, because at this point so many of the original things are already gone.

Then we had to try and find something that matched our cow tile and could somehow blend seamlessly into the rest of the fireplace and not look out of place. That is where we have been stuck until last month when I was determined to get this project finished! Here are before pictures of our fireplace.

Last month we went to a tile store to check out our options and found some marble that I thought would work well (compared to everything I could see). The problem was that we were limited by a few things. First, the original tile was glazed and had a very nice shine to it, so we needed a tile that had a glossy finish. Next, the colors of the original tile are very unique. You can't tell by the picture but the background is white and then it has the brown color that you can see, but it also has a faint light teal-blue color throughout the background also.

We ended up finding a creamy colored marble with a nice shine and we thought it would work because some of the brown on the tiles would fade into tans and creams as it met with the white background. And really, nothing else even came close to being able to work. The problem was that every time I would look at it laid out by the original tile I just didn't love it. It would have been fine, but just not what I thought was right. The photo below shows a piece of the creamy colored tile in the "during" process of the fireplace re-do.
So, we began in earnest prepping the area to lay down the new tile. We borrowed a diamond bit grinder from a neighbor because we needed to smooth out the cement to have a level foundation for the new tile. We really underestimated the mess that the grinding would make! Holy Cow what a mess!

We hung sheets up over the parlor opening so the dust would remain mostly in that room and removed several things from the room and covered the rest, but that fine little dust found it's way into everything!! Below is a picture on the front porch of us trying to clear out some of the dust through the windows with box fans. It was so thick at times that I was afraid someone would think our house was on fire and call the fire department.
Here is a picture of the floor when we were finished grinding and ready to clean up the mess! And boy did it take a long time to clean up all that dust! I mean it was in every crevice even in all the texturing on the walls! Definitely NOT FUN!
After everything was prepped and ready to tile I had a thought about what kinds of tile they would have used 100 years ago. Most antique things that use marble use the classic white marble, right? So, as I thought more about our tiles I decided to go and check out the more white marble tiles to see how they would look. The problem is that usually the veining in the marble is grey and I didn't know how that would look with our brown tiles.

So we needed to get some things from Home Depot anyway so while we were there I checked out their marble selection. As I was looking I noticed the box right on the very front of the white tiles had brown veining in it instead of the usual grey! I couldn't believe it! The nice tile guy that worked there helped me pick through all the tile until we found 2 boxes that had brown and tan veining instead of the grey. I couldn't believe how perfect it was and I was absolutely excited to get home and get that awesome tile in!

Then came the process of figuring out the pattern. We wanted to incorporate some of the original tiles with the marble to blend it into the surround and look like it had always been that way. It took quite a few different layouts until we got just exactly the right diamond pattern with an original tile border that fit the space perfectly! I can't even begin to tell you how thrilled I am with the way it all turned out! You would never know that this wasn't how the fireplace looked when it was originally built 100 years ago! That is a success indeed! Here are some final pictures that I took this morning. I noticed when I look at the pictures that you can't really tell that the veining in the marble is brown. It looks a bit grey, but pictures never to things justice anyway do they? It looks even better in person! I am just so glad it's finally finished!