Everything listed under: fireplace

It's winter in Chicago and it is cold. You awaken to the bracing sounds of a neighbor scraping ice from his windshield, your breath is visible in little arctic puffs and the sidewalks are salt-slushy (if not a bed of solid ice). So, this is the perfect time to talk fireplaces!

The most obvious reason to add a fireplace to a room is to enjoy the warmth that it provides. Aside from basking in the radiant heat, it also adds a lovely ambiance and dancing light that makes a room feel cozy and hospitable.

The first thing to consider is what kind of fireplace is appropriate for your home. The three most common fireplace types are wood burning, electric and gas. Each have their pros and cons regarding cost, efficiency and use. It is important to talk to your contractor and designer about the options that fit your budget and lifestyle. Gas fireplaces seem to be the popular kind of fireplaces being installed in Chicago because of their ease of use. Even though it is more high maintenance, nothing is more romantic than cuddling up with a loved one by the glowing warmth and hearing the soothing crackling of a wood burning fireplace.

The other consideration is how to integrate the fireplace into the design of your space. The wonderful thing about fireplaces these days is that the sky is the limit. You can go modern and sleek or rustic and charming. It can be the focal point on its own, or integrated with built-in bookcases.

We're often asked about the relative merits of Stone vs. Porcelain in interior design projects. In one recent project in Chicago's South Loop, our customer had us design their town home in Mid-Century Modern. We created a fireplace built-in unit which optimally would have been finished in a stone slab, mitered at the edge to make it appear as one massive. However the budget would not allow this. The economical option is to use tile and the question is whether those tile should be porcelain or stone tile

Here were a few of the restrictions our client required:

1. Color Palate Gray
2. Minimum tile dimension 19 inches
3. Tile to tile variability minimal to create the look of one large slab
4. Smooth edge
5. Color uniformity

Here's how the choices of Tile vs. Porcelain filled the jobs requirements:

In general, porcelain is much harder than stone.  It’s harder to cut and harder to polish.  But being a man made product it can be produced with many more colors and textures and is always being updated.  There are only so many stone types that are quarried at a price that makes the viable.

Porcelain is very non-porous and for most types, you can leave red wine on it over night, clean it with almost anything and wipe it up.  A stone, no matter how well sealed, will absorb and discolor.  Cleaning with anything other than soap and water or a specific stone tile cleaner can result in damage.  Stone tile in my shower still show evidence of where I put my shampoo bottle upside down where it leaked a little, but over time, the stains fade or you get used to it and begin to feel your stone is becoming personalized.  “The patina of use.”  They can also be cleaned.  The reason they fade is that water passes through the stone and leaches them out.

For our current project, porcelain fit the bill much better than stone.  Our tile-layers at Stratagem are capable of laying the tile in ways that minimize exposure of the hard to polish edges.  We can also darken them with certain finishes to give them a polished look.  The goal of laying this fireplace was to achieve a slab-like look while saving the customer about 30% on the over all cost.  This required a stone that was consistent in color.  After the porcelain was laid, we mixed up as specific combination of off the shelf mortars to create a color similar to the porcelain itself.  We’ll post a picture in a few days when our Mid-century modern fireplace bookshelf built-in is complete.

Stone has its strengths, too. Variability is sometimes desirable and adds warmth.  (Porcelain can seem sterile in some circumstances.)  Stone has been around forever and will be around forever.  The John Hancock has a lobby from 1968 and it could have been put in last week.  Porcelain has more colors, more possibilities, and thus, it can go out of style, where stone – if it does go out of style – will always come back.  Carrera marble is a good example – it’s back!    In addition, people less familiar with porcelain may not understand it or value as much as stone.  They may see it as something artificial – all things to contend with when building in certain neighborhoods or parts of the country.

Check out some of our tile designs in portfolio -- bathrooms, kitchens, and fireplaces and see if you can tell what is what.  Feel free to send us an e-mail and we'll let you know.

Built-ins create character in any room of the house, but living room built-ins particularly in combination with fireplaces have the highest impact and create an inordinately strong impression on buyers.  The reason for this has to do with the psychological phenomenon related to first and last impressions -- they create our mindset and our most lasting memories.   The fireplace built-in in a living room is often the first and last thing a visitor or buyer will see.  In the case of friends, the site of your fireplace is linked to the special moments of saying hello and saying good-bye.  These positive feelings become associated with the space they take place in.  If you don't thing so, do this mind experiment.   Imagine some place from your personal past where something good happened to you.  Walk through the space in your mind and afterwards see how you feel.

There's a lot of psychology at the heart of good interior design because one of the three main goals of excellent interior design is creating a space that makes you feel great.   A really sharp interior designer will make the process of designing equally positive.  Under these circumstances, the second goal can be achieved: making your space an expression of yourself whatever you want that expression to be.   We see an optimal process as one where the clients feel entirely comfortable expressing their likes and dislikes.  A good interior designer should be able to give you any look you want, from Art's and Crafts to Mid-Century Modern to an Eclectic contemporary design and make a space look like it came right out of design magazine, but the challenge is to create a space that carries the client in it.  

We have two interior design clients in the south loop who have merged their love of design and their individual styles to create some magnificent finishes in their newly acquired town home, one being a fireplace built-in combination.   The interior design and construction work are being done by us giving us excellent flexibility.  To keep with in budget we have designed the fireplace with a unique tile surround.  The question is whether to spend $4000 more for the same surround in miter cut stone.  There’s no doubt the design in a large piece of stone will be magnificent and jaw-dropping.   Our advice is to spend the money if it all fits with in the client’s design budget.   The residence is about a million dollars meaning it comprises about .4% of the total cost.   From a sales perspective alone it will achieve that .4% back and possibly much more.   Some buyer will find it absolutely unforgettable and not be able to live without it.

In the mean time, the clients can enjoy it along with their friends, family and other guests.   Clients who have had us doing designer fireplace built-ins in their living rooms have given us more positive feed back than for any other built-ins we’ve done and the reason is that all their guests see it and positively respond to it.