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2. Fireplace Hearth Options With the upheaval and uncertainty in the home mortgage lending business, more and more homeowners are deciding to stay put for awhile. No one wants to sell their house at a loss, and homeowners who can wait out the housing crunch prefer to wait it out rather than to lose money and sell now.

3. Gas Crunch Means Staying In Converging with the trend of keeping a home longer before selling it is the trend of rising gasoline prices. High gas prices mean more and more families are staying at home instead of going out on weekend vacation trips or weeknight evenings away from home.

4. Staying In Means Remodeling Spending all that time at home makes homeowners look at their residences with a new eye. Suddenly, worn surfaces seem shabby, and outdated looks need to be updated. The more time a homeowner spends at home, looking at their house, the more they will want to remodel or redecorate.

5. Redoing The Fireplace Hearth A fireplace refacing project is one of the best investments you can make in your home. Updating brick or plain tile to stone or custom tile can give you a huge bang for your buck. Not only that, but most fireplaces are located in open areas of the home that a lot of people see. By replacing your fireplace surround and hearth, you are changing an area that will get a lot of attention, as the fireplace is also often the focal point of the room.

6. Fireplace Hearth Choices Any time you are dealing with a fireplace surround and hearth, you will need to check your local building code to see what the regulations are for fireboxes in your local area. Obviously, the purpose of a fireplace hearth is to protect your flooring and home from live sparks and embers. Therefore, your fireplace hearth must be constructed of fireproof material, and it must be a minimum size which will be dictated by your local building code.

7. Fireproof material Other than these two requirements – fireproof material, and minimum size – your imagination is your limit when it comes to planning a new fireplace hearth.

8. Matching the Hearth To The Surround Matching the fireplace hearth to the surround is not always a good idea. Marble, for example, is a fragile, brittle stone that is perfectly suited for light duty vertical surfaces, like a fireplace surround. However, marble stone may be too fragile for a horizontal hearth that will have to bear foot traffic, hold firewood and fire tools, and so forth.

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