What is this fireplace? (Photo)

[lettie9]

Can anyone tell me what's going on with this fireplace - what's its likely era? Is it worth keeping? It's not to my taste, but I don't want to get rid of it if it's a relic. It's an Edwardian home.

I don’t think it would be cheap. It’s going to be very time consuming and I would probably investigate some kind of sand blasting. Or just learn to live with it. I’m not touching the stain on our fireplace. Too ornate, too big. But once we decorated the rest of the room to complement it, it settled so much.

I don't think I could live with this. Just no. I suppose I could chip away myself over days, weeks (?) - would get there eventually surely.

We have one of these in our 1913 house. It’s in mahogany. Initially hated it, but it’s massively grown on me. If you decide to ditch it, there’s a fairly active resale market for these surrounds - sell it on.

It’s absolutely possible to strip it back and repaint - we did it with another fireplace in another room (painted white). Took time and effort. Paying someone to do it wouldn’t be cheap - would expect about £300 but may be more…

@CTR1000 oh god, would you still have to strip if you were going to paint it anyway??

Would you suggest selling on eBay? Or some antique site?

This is a good article about how colour works with 80s/90s ‘honey oak’. It’s American so the paint colours will need some thought, but there is a lot of honey oak left in American homes. Part of the problem with your photo is the tiles in the fireplace don’t go with the wood colour at all, neither does the wall colour. It looks like quite a light room so I would consider something really bold like F&B oval room blue, or their blue grey (actually green but whatever), or something like Little Greene’s tracery II.

jennakateathome.com/paint-colors-honey-oak/

Have a look online for prices. My local one does doors from £20. They collect/drop off too.
TBH, even if they said £150 it would be worth it to not have to strip it myself, took me weeks to get about 7 layers off a highly detailed cast iron fireplace.

Unfortunately yes! Bit of a labour of love really. Stripped, two coats of an undercoat and then glossed. Hence why it’s quite expensive to pay a professional.

eBay would probably do it, or potentially an antique fireplace shop?

Aha! I've found these guys

www.londondoorstripping.co.uk/online_quote.html

@Notsoaccidentproneanymore

Think it would be a pain to strip - all those carvings and mouldings.

If you do decide to strip then Dcrefix own brand stripper works as well as anything.

Alternatively Zinsser do a paint anything paint which has good reviews.

I use Zinsser on anything in my house that stays still for more than 5 minutes When I moved in, all the woodwork in my Georgian cottage was mahogany lacquered — a 1980s interpretation of a period look. Quick rub over (literally; you don’t need to properly sand it), a coat or two of Zinsser 123 for easy jobs/BIN (solvent-based) for really difficult surfaces et voila: ready to paint. I’d drink the stuff, I love it that much. The solvent-based one for preference hic

I'm totally into the Zinsser suggestion generally btw. Thank you. I'll give that a go when painting furniture - it's just a primer, right? What's the benefit of Zinsser over any other primer?

It’s self priming so you should just be able to do as many coats as it needs without stripping, priming, undercoating, top coating etc.

Edwardians tended to paint their wood. The liking for stripped back timber is anachronistic - post 1980s really.

I also think this is much to do with the colour of the walls. I’ve a honey oak fire place in one room and I also hated it, I painted the room farrow ans ball french grey (which is actually green) and it makes the fire place look lovely.

I had a similar old wooden fireplace in my last house and painted it with blackboard paint it looked amazing as it was a black matt finish. It still looked great 10 years later when I left

@RedTop22 that's interesting! May I see a photo? I love blackboard paint 🖤

If you want to strip it, Nitromors used to do a version that you painted on (it was very thick), and then pressed a special paper all over it and left it for X hours (I think 4). You then peeled it off and it brought the paint with it. I used on a very fiddly Victorian fire surround that had been covered in layers of gloss and it worked a charm.

Not sure if it still exists, though. It looks as if there has been a major reformulation as a result of legal changes.

Hmm thanks for the tip! We have little ones so maybe not - sounds very potent ☠️