We Retiled the Fireplace Hearth

So when we bought our house, the fireplace hearth (the floor around the fireplace) was tiled with peachy beige glossy 4"x4" tiles that were old, broken, and unappealing.

I knew right away when we bought the house it would have to go.  But at that point, we were in over our heads, so we waited till after we moved in to tackle this little project.  

At first we planned to go with a grey slate 2"x2" tile.  We had wanted to do a mosaic tile backsplash in our kitchen, but since we used the left over subway tile from our shower instead, we tried incorporating into our fireplace instead.

Well, this plan didn't work out.  The grey slate looked really blue and very stark against our floors and paint colors.  It just didn't have the earthy feel we wanted.  The 2x2" mosaic was way too busy, considering all the texture and busy lines in our brick fireplace.  

We really wanted to use slate, and we loved the "multi-colored" slate at Lowes, but we were afraid it was too "out there" because of the color variance and thought it might hurt our resale potential.  But since the grey slate didn't work out, we revisited the idea.

We decided to try out the multi-colored slate from Lowe's in 6"x6" tiles with a light grey grout.

When we brought the tile home and laid it out, we knew right away it was going to look great.  It really unites the floor and the fireplace.  It picks up all the colors of our dark walnut floors, the coal covered red brick inside the fireplace, and the painted grey brick fireplace surround.

I carefully laid out the tiles to balance out the colors.  We bought a few extra boxes of tiles and chose the tiles that went together best, then backed up whatever we didn't use and returned it.  (These tiles are sold individually at Lowe's, so this was easier than going through all the tiles at Lowe's and picking and choosing there.)

Then Chris got to work...

Here's how it turned out...

Here's the recap...

After: