Faux Fireplace Discovery

Upon checking out the demo of the living room, I discovered that a faux fireplace existed at one time. This finally solves the mystery of whether or not my bungalow had a fireplace. Most of the houses on my block have wood burning fireplaces with exposed chimneys along the exterior. Even the real estate ad that led me to the house listed a fireplace in the description.

From my preliminary research, it was not uncommon for houses in the 1920's to have decorative fireplaces along with the woodburning variety. Seeing the ghosting of the mantle and the trim for windows along the wall was definitive proof that a decorative fireplace did exist. It also answers the question of "Why would you have a window over a fireplace?" I have a transom or piano window over the area where the mantle used to be. Since the fireplace is decorative, a window in that location would not be an issue.

I also pulled up the carpet in that area and you can see where a tile hearth used to be. Now it just has a few planks of old wood covering the space. My plan is to use some reproduction Malibu tile I purchased a few months ago as accents along with a colored coordinating field tile. A link to a tile that has the same design (but differenct color) as my accent tile is here.

I happened upon a web site for a foundation dedicated to historical tile by doing a Yahoo Search on Batchelder. The foundation also sells tile catalogs from Batchelder, Catalina, Malibu, etc. I plan on getting a few catalogs to research fireplace designs that I can use or modify to recreate my hearth.