Tile A Marble Herringbone Fireplace, step by step

With our fireplace refacing plan all worked out, and our supplies waiting at the ready, it was time to dive into step 1: TILE! So we are here with every last detail, from prepping and tiling to grouting.

In case my sketch below is still indecipherable to everyone but me, I highlighted the areas of the photo below that are going to get the tile treatment. The tile border is only about 7 inches wide because the rest of the brick is going to get framed out with wood and MDF (which will layer on top of the tile, hence doing tile first).

Oh but it is smart to check the code in your area to make sure your wood surround is not too close to your firebox (ours calls for at least 6″ of tile and then the wood surround can start). And no, the tile is not going to be grellow. Ha!

If you recall, the tile we picked out was this marble subway found at Home Depot for a little over $5 per square foot.

But before we could start slapping tile everywhere (that is a technical description, btw) we had to create a smooth surface on which to attach them. So we picked up some 1/4″ cement board and we used the old bend score and snap method to cut it into strips. Then, thanks to some heavy duty masonry screws and a low-cost masonry bit for our drill, we attached them to the fireplace. It was quite a dusty process, and it helped to have four hands around for it (Sherry would hold while I drilled and vice versa).

Oh yeah, and it was around this point that we realized we likely should clear off everything sitting on the fireplace mantel so that all of our drilling did not send anything down on our heads. Plus I am not going to lie, if I directly (or even indirectly) sent one of those ceramic houses on the mantel crashing to the floor, the lady wife would not be pleased (I have sort of a bad track record when it comes to things like that).

So after we cleared things off the mantel and ripped off the old wood top while we were at it (demo-ing things fully before tiling is consistently smart) it was back to tile prep. For the bottom hearth portion, I in fact simply squeezed out a whole bunch of heavy duty construction adhesive, laid down my pieces of cement board and then stacked some heavy storage ottomans (of which we have plenty around here) to hold them securely in place overnight (I later brought in a few screws at the corners simply to reinforce them).

The pleasant thing about adhering the cement board right over the old hearth instead of demoing it out first was that because we brought in the cork floor right over our previous linoleum one (due to not wanting to disturb an asbestos liner underneath) we still had room to add cement board and tile without it bumping up and being oddly raised (in fact it brought it back to being aligned).

So here is the fireplace all set and ready for actual tile.

Well, not totally all set and ready. We hoped to protect our cork floors before getting into the thinset-and-grout-y mess of a tiling project, so we swiftly taped down some protective rosin paper leftover from our last kitchen tile project.

We also took the time to lay out our tile beforehand. At Bryn’s suggestion, we picked up a few extra boxes than we needed, simply to account for overage and so we could pick out any weirdly chipped or discolored ones. Thankfully there were not many broken or otherwise wonky tiles, so I’d say that we used 90% of the tile we picked up, and only returned 10% as overage tile (which is a fairly normal percentage – and Home Depot is glad to take it back).

It was a smidge tedious to lay it all out, but it was strong because we could begin to see how they’d come together and even do things like space out the veining (so there was a pleasant mix of both instead of all of the dark veining ending up on one side of the hearth and all the lighter tiles on the other side). And in the interest of using as many tiles as we could without being especially picky, we also made a pile of “why-is-this-one-weird-or-chipped-on-one-side?” tiles to use for the smaller cut pieces that we’d need (we could slice off the weird/bad parts for many of the edge tiles anyway).

And as you can see from the angled cut that I am marking below – we chose to go for a herringbone pattern on the hearth mixed with a traditional brick-layers pattern on the fireplace surround (we held them up a few ways and liked that configuration best). Update: we are getting requests for more info on why we chose that combo, so here ya go… with so little surface area (simply 7″ showing around the firebox) it would not truly establish the pattern sufficient (we thought it would look like random and busy half-zigs and half-zags without sufficient of the tile showing to look like chevron). So we held it up both ways and liked the simpler pattern for the smaller area, simply because we did not think it would look as chaotic.

And thank goodness we own this triangle square…

It was a lifesaver since in short every single cut for the hearth was on a 45-degree angle. And after cutting tons of crown molding on all sorts of angles, I gotta say that this was much simpler. Anyone can do this. Yes, even you scared-of-tiling folks out there. It is truly not that bad. I promise.

We made all of our cuts with our wet saw (one of my go-to tools) and it was fairly straightforward. The only challenge was that the marble was a bit brittle so sometimes the corners broke off as I got to the end of a cut. But I did not lose too many tiles in the process, so it was in fact a lot easier to work with than penny tile (we had a much higher learning curve when it came to cutting that).

Once we had a few of our initial pieces cut, we mixed up some thinset (still leftover from penny tiling – woot!) and began slapping down some tile. Again, that is a technical term.

I realize I am glossing over some of the details of the actual tiling process. But we have covered it so extensively in the posts below (including video) that I thought sharing those links made the most sense. So for this project simply trust us that it went along fairly much the same way unless otherwise noted in this post.

• Here is how to hang cement board
• Here is how to install penny tile (including video)
• Here is how to grout penny tile (including video)
• Here is how to de-haze & sealing tile
• Here is how to install a subway tile shower & marble floor (including an extremely detailed supply list)

Once we had the pattern began it was a fairly mindless process, it simply took a long time because there were so many cuts involved in such a small space. But it was fairly straightforward (it was one of those simply-keep-going tasks that did not involve much problem solving once we got the hang of it). I’d guess that it took us a good four hours to get the bottom portion done (although it was broken up by lunch plans with an old coworker, so it still ate up a good portion of day 1).

The next day during Clara’s nap we attacked the top portion, which went significantly faster because the straight cuts were easier to do.

And since the outer edge was going to get covered by the MDF frame of our wood surround eventually, we did not have to be sticklers for a clean edge. In fact, Sherry and I figured out a way to stagger the tiles so that we were able to reuse both sides of a cut, which made life much easier. See how the bottom row has a cut tile on the left? The other half of that tile is in the row above it (on the right). So they sort of staggered themselves up the wall, and we were not creating tons of tile fragments that we could not use.

So by the end of day 2, we had all of our tile done. Yeehaw. (Oh, and that white strip of brick inside the fireplace is eventually going to get painted the same dark charcoal color as the rest of the firebox, so simply ignore it for now – and of course we have trim pieces for the floor around the hearth so it’ll be seamless and smooth in the end).

The next evening we got our grout on using some non-sanded grout from Home Depot in their Snow White color (it is not especially white, sort of a quite soft gray).

I do not know about you folks, but for some reason the transformation from un-grouted tile to grouted tile is especially satisfying to me. Seriously. I could grout all day… well, if I had a bionic wrist.

As I shoved grout into joints, Sherry stepped in periodically with a slightly damp sponge to smooth everything and wipe off the excess. I am still jealous of how clean she stayed.

Grouting took all of 45 minutes, perhaps. And it left us with this beaut. Admittedly it still looks crazy without a built out mantel around it, but that is next on the agenda.

So we are excited to start building the surround, reconstructing the mantle, adding trim and molding, priming and painting, and eating a celebratory cookie (or twenty) when we are at last done.

Oh and we sealed all of the tile/grout after the grout-drying waiting period on the bottle (we had some leftover from the backsplash). Took ten minutes tops. Ending up with a fully re-tiled hearth and fireplace surround (in white marble, no less) feels like such an upgrade for only around seven hours of work (total), and the budget was not nearly as scary as “marble tile” sounds. Ha!

• Cement board (2 sheets): $16
• Masonry screws: already owned
• Liquid Nails Heavy Duty: $2
• Subway tile: $5.50/sq ft, totaling $70
• Thinset: Already owned
• Tiling tools (saw, trowel, float, etc): already owned
• Grout: $11
• Tile sealer: already owned
• TOTAL: $99 (*thanks to some holiday gift cards from the family, we in fact only spent $49 – but without gift cards or already owned supplies this might be an $150 upgrade)
  

I think we are riding a herringbone high right now. Seriously. I am so glad we chose to do that pattern. For some reason it makes me feel especially fancy. Perhaps we need to rename our house Downton Ranchy.

And perhaps we should record a sequel to this SNL skit called “Marble Subway Tile.”

Does anyone else have some good experiences with subway tile, a herringbone pattern, or tiling a fireplace in general to share? Have you purchased a marble column lately? Are you like “What is this, The White House??”

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