I'm planning to put down some hardwood flooring and to get a better understanding of what I'd be getting into, I started to remove this horribly ugly mantle around my fireplace. I haven't removed it completely because it seems to be covered in soot that I'm not ready to clean up yet, but I did take a peek at the subfloors underneath the mantle and it's kind of weird.
It's an old house so the subfloors are thin wooden planks, but the weird part is they seem to just end haphazardly around the firebox, leaving some small gaps. I can see straight through the gaps between the subfloors and firebox to the basement. Granted, they aren't huge gaps, maybe a few square inches at most, but I know that good subfloors are extremely important for flooring, especially nail down hardwood.
I dont see any supporting wood around the fireplace that I could use to lay new planks down to cover the gaps.
Should I worry about this area? Do I need to address it or are the gaps negligible? I plan to put down hardwood that is 5" wide, if that makes any difference.
I've taken a few pics to show what I'm dealing with. This is the ugly mantle I'm talking about:
the ugly mantle
I popped off the top of it to take these next two photos of it on the left and right sides. If you zoom in you can see where the subfloor jaggedly ends:
left mantle corner
right mantle corner
Also I'd like to put a gas insert in the fireplace in the future, but in the meantime I'm looking for suggestions on how to make the fireplace look presentable. I plan to get rid of the tile and replace it with something like black slate, but only on the inside of the firebox, so I would be installing hardwood right up to the opening to keep my options open (the opening to the chimney is sealed off so it isn't a functional fireplace at the moment).
The arch poses a problem, both for making it look decent and for modernizing it with an insert, which I'm told needs a rectangular opening. Im wondering if it's worth having someone remove the arch and make the opening rectangular, and maybe getting rid of the white paint exposing the brick. That way I could do a smaller, more modern looking mantle around it and the opening would be insert-friendly when Im ready for it.
Thoughts?
It's an old house so the subfloors are thin wooden planks, but the weird part is they seem to just end haphazardly around the firebox, leaving some small gaps. I can see straight through the gaps between the subfloors and firebox to the basement. Granted, they aren't huge gaps, maybe a few square inches at most, but I know that good subfloors are extremely important for flooring, especially nail down hardwood.
I dont see any supporting wood around the fireplace that I could use to lay new planks down to cover the gaps.
Should I worry about this area? Do I need to address it or are the gaps negligible? I plan to put down hardwood that is 5" wide, if that makes any difference.
I've taken a few pics to show what I'm dealing with. This is the ugly mantle I'm talking about:
the ugly mantle
I popped off the top of it to take these next two photos of it on the left and right sides. If you zoom in you can see where the subfloor jaggedly ends:
left mantle corner
right mantle corner
Also I'd like to put a gas insert in the fireplace in the future, but in the meantime I'm looking for suggestions on how to make the fireplace look presentable. I plan to get rid of the tile and replace it with something like black slate, but only on the inside of the firebox, so I would be installing hardwood right up to the opening to keep my options open (the opening to the chimney is sealed off so it isn't a functional fireplace at the moment).
The arch poses a problem, both for making it look decent and for modernizing it with an insert, which I'm told needs a rectangular opening. Im wondering if it's worth having someone remove the arch and make the opening rectangular, and maybe getting rid of the white paint exposing the brick. That way I could do a smaller, more modern looking mantle around it and the opening would be insert-friendly when Im ready for it.
Thoughts?
Subfloor gaps around a fireplace
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