If it is a gas fire then you don't have soot and blowback issues to consider. I'd probably try the limestone in that case.
I suspect the warmth will make it smell rather of creosote.
Our new mantlepiece is a large piece of green oak beeswaxed to seal it that was set into the wall in front of the RSJ that really holds up the opened out hearth. It has shrunk a bit but looks very nice.
Ha, at the other end of that room it was a bare flat plain plasterboard wall. Behind that was:
I know which I prefer...
Of course, there does appear to be a lot of demand for "retro" but all the stuff I look at only has a nod to the style of the period. Like "rotary" dial phones but with lightweight buttons instead of holes. Real push button phones from that period were quite chuncky and solid, even on the trimphone.
As your building is notionally stone I'd go for stone but not the neat cut 1/3rds ratio brick like blocks that the 70 things here was made from but truely random stone.
Adrian wrote in news:l7pepk$dhv$2 @speranza.aioe.org:
Hideousness exists only in the mind of the beholder... which doesn't say a lot for yours, really, does it?
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