What would you do with this fireplace?

[Teluna]

We are planning to redecorate our living room. We moved in over a year ago and have been making our way around the house. We have some ideas for the rest of the room but can’t decide about the fireplace. It’s not an original feature, it’s a gas fire and the house itself is only 50/60 years old. We quite like it though and the tiles are along the right lines for the colour scheme we want. How do we tell if it’s worth putting effort in to cleaning up/re-blacking/converting the old gas fire into something more usable?

Oops, forgot the photo...

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We are getting a small stove fitted into where the gas fire is. So the tiles and decorative stuff is retained but there's a small woodburner.

That’s a good idea. I was wondering about the colour of the surround. It looks like it used to all be black and it has rubbed off. Or maybe it was a deliberate ‘weathered’ look. I don’t know whether it would be better/possible to remove all the black, or to get the polish/paint to make it all black again?

You can buy stuff to blacken that style of fireplace - general hardware stores usually sell it and it comes in either a small tin of liquid that you paint on or a small jar like shoe polish you rub on. Pretty cheap but makes a huge difference.

We've just had a new fire surround our in, and the man who did it rubbed oil into our slate hearth and inner bit to restore them - it was only boiled linseed oil - but would be worth speaking to a fireplace shop as to what to use on yours (cast iron). It makes such a difference, looks as though it's just been installed.

It's a pretty fireplace, would you prefer a wood burner rather than gas? I wonder if you'd have to lose the tiles to do that - it looks like it's all one unit, but is that the case?

We replaced our wooden surround for a marble one, has made an enormous difference to the room.

It looks a bit 90s fake art nouveaux imo.
I would replace it or at least blacken the silvery looking tiles and get rid of the gas fire in the middle.

The whole house was a 90s time capsule when we moved in! I think the previous owners bought it, decorated once and never touched it again. Maybe that will be us in 30 years’ time 😄