1930s House Fire Place, Painting and decorating suggestions - A big list

[ConfusedIsMyMiddleName]

Hello all,
A new mumsnetter here 👋, over the past few years I have seen some wonderful suggesions and ideas on similar topics (and everything else). So I decided to join in myself :) Any good suggestions/ dos and don'ts on this topic are greatly appreciated. And advance apologies, as it's going to be a looong post.🙏

We live in a (late 1920s- early )1930s Semi and we are going to be doing lots and lots of renovation/decoration work.
To start, we got 2 original fire places with glazed brick tiles. This was hidden behind some paneling and I believe the glazed brick tiled Hearths are under the current flooring.
One FP has a Dark Orchre/Brownish Yellow Tiles with a (typical to the period ) arched tile pattern + tall white pine surround with a circular mirror, all surface tiles intact. but may not be the case for the Hearth tiles.
The other FP has Dark Pinkish Red (soft red/cherry pink) tiles and a straight rectangular pattern with curved 'opening' tiles in inner and outer border - so originally there wasn't a surround but just a shelf. Couple of surface tiles slightly damaged and few border tiles are broken and missing from both inner and outer sides.
Both are in a very 'neglected' state at the Moment.
I am hoping I could get them back to a descent state (or bring back to life! rather :)) with some cleaning and perhaps replacig the broken tiles instead of completely getting rid of the old tiles and going in with a cast iron type inserts etc. Because I think I quite warmed in to the old tiles. :) But realised (after searching online for a while) that replacing the same colour tiles are going to be near impossible as I haven't come across them/colours anywhere yet. We are going to cut the floor to see the state of hearth, but if it is not in a good condition, I would need to find some good alternatives to replace it with (asap).

My first Q is: in worst case scenario what are my options? for hearth or completer fire palce? Will I be ruining the hosue in the process trying to fix this?
Anyone has any idea of a place I could source these tiles?

For the pink red fire place with opening bricks missing, I tought perhaps I could use the remaining outer ones to fix the missing inner border, remove all outer border (with a heavy heart) and get a wooden surround to cover up the border.
How should I go about the Hearth if the existing is not in a good state? Should I put different cololur (say creame/white) tiles? A Black slate hearth :( ?

My second Q is on Painting and decorating: House used to have (atleast) the Picture rails. I am thinking of adding them back in and also may be the dado rails. Hallway has the staircase at the front (another typical) so on that side wall height is bit different to the rest. cieling is abot 2.4cm heigh and currently have covings. Adding them through to living room and Master bedroom, second room etc.
what do the majority think about adding dado rails and picture rails both? Or just add one? if so which one?
(Also I really really desperately want to use a different collour for bottom half of the hallway/up the stairs or find a solution for the 'grubby little hands' which is not = ask them to wash the hands as it 'does Not' work at the moment🙈)

thank you so much! x

@ShitaBrick & @notanicepersonapparently Thank you both for all the interesting ideas and inputs. Strange as it may sound to you, all these different ideas and inputs actucally help me.
I think you both are 'on to something' here 😊By looking at all your inputs and everything else that I had a chance to look at online, I think, Yes, from the build time wise my home falls into '1930s' (semi - circular bay/bow window etc) - but I think it may have actually built in the very very late 1920s - so, eitherway, it is inbetween the wars, making it also 'inter war' (and probably also at the same time of 'Art Deco' started to appear?). But as some sources suggested, some of the 'Edwardian' features had continued to this era such as fireplaces, perhaps making the fireplace in particular falls into 'Edwardian Arch' type mentioned like in here:
https://www.c20fireplaces.co.uk/repro-fireplace-insert/rfpi011_edwardian-arch-tiled-fireplace-insert
Also, one place I mangaed to contact (that does theese FP tiles) mentioned these as falling back towards more 'Edwardian' in terms of colour and style of FP, if all that makes sense.
So, from all that I understand although it doesn't mean the property entirely is 'Edwardian', rather that 'some' features had corssed the periods and overlapped, such as the fire places and 3 over 3, 6 panel doors (Vs 1 over 3 panel doors of 1930s) etc.
What all this means to me is that when I have different terms to search, I get more matches rather than not having any place to look into :) So thank you 🙏

@ShitaBrick that all sounds lovely.
I think we got those '80s' chrome handles in our bedroom doors and possibly the most hideous front door replacement ever! which I am hoping to change back to a nicer original sort of one at some point this year - once this step of the project is over (also after I actually disclose it to DH!!) - another 'major' item of the long list of mine 😅
(Would love to see a bit of door handles, picture rails and front door of yours if it 's ok)

This is the pink-red colour of one of my FP.

Thank you @ConfusedIsMyMiddleName . Tbh we initially wanted more colour but we're very happy with our decision.
We have the same age house. We're the 3rd owners and I saw documentation confirming the house was built in between 1927-1929 with the 1st owner in 1929.

Re the cleaning. A dry cloth once every 2 weeks. However there are only 3 (one toddler) of us so the mess at that height is minimal

@ConfusedIsMyMiddleName these are my front door, picture rails, door handles. As you can see we leave the scars of the old (original) door furniture in situ, as a footprint of the history of the house.

My son is asleep in the fireplace room but I’ll get a photo of that for you tomorrow. Your tiles are much redder than mine though, mine are more of a purple pink.

My house was built in 1935. I’ve seen the original plans ledger with the plot numbers and builder.

OP, if you’d like to read more about the period, I really enjoyed Ideal Homes, by Deborah Sugg Ryan. It won’t have specific architectural pictures like some of the other books, but it gives a lot of context for the period.

I've just moved into a 1920s house where every feature had originally been torn out (except the front door) I'm in the process of reinstating the picture rails. I have bought one over three doors (unfortunately couldn't get enough reclaimed before the builders arrived so they are new solid doors)

I bought a reclaimed wooden fireplace surround from the 20s but really struggling with the insert and slate. A fireplace reclamation yard is telling me a cast iron arch. But you guys all have beautiful tiles. Will a cast iron arch look massively wrong? I'm about to put down the deposit.

Any other amazing features to reinstate? I did ask our new neighbours but I don't think there are a lot of original features left unfortunately

That front door is a Beauty! @ShitaBrick 😍

Thanks for the pics. white Doors are pretty too! Yes, I can totally get onboard with 'keeping the scars of character'.

thanks @housemadd - will check that up too.

I need to find lots and lots of of thngs!! :( (Before my DH go onto search for the '100 ways to murder your wife!' 😂)

This is one of (the good) original doors in our home. We stripped the paint and waxed them for the time being. You can see the chrome handles (guessing they are later additions?). Some of them have wood cracks and kind of loosen up at joints/panels (in around beading I guess - not sure of the exact terms).

Am I being silly to think I can/should keep them in this way?
Or what can I do to make them better - except for painting white?
(I don't strongly disagree to painting them in white either - it's on the cards too) just want to explore options if anything else outthere.

Our skirting/architrave (and other decorative stuff once I add them) mostly will be in white - not thinking of painting them to any fancy colours --- yet.

Handles and locks: What would go better here according to the period? what materials/colour?
I personally prefer handles to knobs (for practical reasons in the way our family operates - not for any aesthetical reasons)
Living room door has a beautiful glass knob. Need to find one similar for Open plan area (as the previous dining room one was chucked out by the builders!! - a long story! ).

We live in the souh east (London) - can anyone please recommend good salvage yards in this area (even in north London)?
Willing to go that extra (20) mile(s) :D

Oh. I feel you @A1b2c3d4e5f6g7 .

Resently I was told by one very well known Fire place restorer in my area that they don't do my kind of Fireplaces at all , only the cast iron types as when taking them out it's near impossible to take the tiles/insert out without damaging them as they are directly fixed to the cement/concrete slab. So people who remove them, don't do that kind of delicate jobs - simply get rid of them (shame! :( ). So they dont have many reclaimed items coming into the market (that explains why we don't see many reclamations for these type Vs cast iron or Cast Iron+ tile inserts).

however, luckily,
https://www.c20fireplaces.co.uk/rfpi as @notanicepersonapparently mentioned and this othe place https://www.heritagefireplacecentre.com/ seem to have good options.
(There could be other online places too, I just saw these two). Hopefully you'll find something beautiful soon.
Also, looking at what other posters listed above, I think you have few different options (styles) to go for interms of 1930s fire palce - especially if you are restoring a complete new one in a a place there is none at the moment.

And congratulations on your House move and good luck with restoration work!
hopefully we'll learn from all and each other :)

thank you for the cleaning tip @TrudyProud . going to copy this! but unfortunately our 'little hands' are at the worst height level :D:

Oh, I think those doors are lovely, OP. If it was me I would definitely keep them wood. They don’t look new and perfect, but that’s a good thing. They add so much warmth and character.

Handles (instead of knobs) are appropriate for the period, so you could maybe swap the ones you have for something else, to make them your own. I haven’t really found the dream 1930s handles, though. A lot of the beautiful ones online, like Jim Lawrence, seem to be designed for much older houses.

@ConfusedIsMyMiddleName the door is gorgeous! I also like it bare wood. And thank you so much for the fireplace links. Many of the 1930s and 1940s ones are shown with the cast iron arches, so maybe that will work! The tiles are really special but so expensive.

Good luck with your renovation- I'll be watching along here for any updates

Sorry that was meant to say 1920s and 1930s fireplaces!

After much trying we gave up on getting a set of reclaimed door handles for our 30s house and bought from here instead, they looked absolutely fantastic: https://rebornbakelite.co.uk

Thanks a lot @ChairOfInvisibleStudies . They seem to have lots of options 😍

@ConfusedIsMyMiddleName just spotted your thread and thought I'd add a some photos of some of the original details in my house in case it helps. My house is slightly older than yours 1922/23 but it sounds like some of the details would be similar. Your internal doors aren't as typical for the period as the one-over-three that you usually see. We have quite unusual ones (pic 1) for the period too, I've never seen ones like this before. The upstairs door handles are original (pic 2) but the downstairs ones had all been replaced to brass versions of what you have so we changed them to knobs. The knob in pic 3 was inside a cupboard so we think that was what we had originally.

We have 6 fireplaces remaining and 5 have surrounds like these which sound similar to yours. We don't have any with mirrors but lots of our neighbours do. The 3 downstairs fires had been replaced with living flame gas fires before we moved in and they have slate tiled hearths which could be an option if you find your hearths have been damaged. Our bedroom fireplace has an arched tile that sounds similar to yours. The tiled hearth was painted white before we stripped it so I think the remaining white tiles are probably also blue.

You can see the coving in the lounge and we had 5 or 6 rooms with a dado rail and the hall has a dado and picture rail. We ended up taking the dado out of the lounge when we had the alcove shelving built as it looked a bit odd.

If you are on Facebook then there is a group called 'I Love my Period House' which is very helpful.

Thank you @TheMousePipes. I checked them and have got some good options though they didn't have exact matching tiles
:(

Thank you @TattiePants for all the pics. Your doors/FPs and colour schemes all look great too 😍very pretty colour tiles they are.

Is that green colour in a bedroom? Loving it!!

@ConfusedIsMyMiddleName yes it's Little Greene's Mid Azure Green.

I had (honestly) the happiest moment (after a long time) over the weekend as we managed to uncover one of the hearths- it was all in tact though it was in a messy state. Scrubbed it my arm off and was admiring it whole day yesterday..
But my happiness is short lived..:(

As I just heard ttoday that our chimney is with issues and won't be able to use at current state. Chimney need to be lined again (or something like that) OR... our best options will be to install a log burner/gas/electric fire if we ever think of using them. Cost for all different option is not small but I am most heart broken as they said if I decided to line the chimney my current fire inserts/tiles will be gone as no way to save them (need to take out surrounding etc). 😭😭

Any wise minds who could save my heartache?
Should I post this as a new thread?

I guess it depends on how warm your house is and whether you need a fire in addition to central heating. We have 3 gas fires downstairs and the only time we turn any of them on is the dining room on Christmas day! I don't think the others have been on in the last 5 years. If you're really set on having a working fire could they be moved to another room (like a bedroom) where they would be decorative?

One is in bedroom and the one below that is in the living/dining room.
We most likely would have used it like you said too @TattiePants during christmas and in few occadions in cold winter holiday season. and like them for decorative/aesthetic reasons too.