Fireplace Material?
We just finished removing about 100 layers of paint from one of the fireplaces in our home. It revealed a fireplace made of a medium green stone/slate which is not marbled in appearance. Can anybody venture a guess as to what type of material this may be? Also, how should it be maintained? Thanks.
We just finished removing about 100 layers of paint from one of the fireplaces in our home. It revealed a fireplace made of a medium green stone/slate which is not marbled in appearance. Can anybody venture a guess as to what type of material this may be? Also, how should it be maintained? Thanks.
Email us a pic and we’ll post it
We had plexiglass covers cut out to match the dimensions of the top of our mantels to give our tenants. Looks good and wears extremely well. No worries for us. Otherwise we left our mantels along. In fact I wish we didn’t actually strip the final layers of blurred together paint on the mantels. There’s something gorgeous and unique about things that are in their own state of imperfection. Sometimes I think if you strive for perfection with these old houses at best you get a Disney-esque version of it (if you have the bucks) and if not you just always feel like you settled for something wrong. Embrace the aging process of the old homes and stop stripping it all away.
We have the same fireplaces and have not sealed them in 5 years and they look great. They will scratch so be careful what you put on the mantel.
A couple more details: you can buy a wash that is specially designed to clean up traces of chemical stripper such as Rock Miracle. Also, slate comes in many many colors and although we are most used to seeing it in a dark charcoal grey color, it does also occur in green. What you have sounds identical to what we have. If you think it’s soapstone, that’s easy to test. Soapstone is much softer than slate and can be easily marked with a knife (try in a concealed area) whereas a knife will scratch slate but not cut into the surface.
Hi, Our house has the same green slate fireplaces with lovely etched lines. We stripped the faux marble painted finish because it was too damaged to restore. We thought briefly about repainting in the same style but now really love the bare stone — even if it would horrify a true Victorian. We haven’t yet done anything else to our mantels but I was planning to use a basic sealer, similar to what countertop and bathroom stone tile installers use. Just ask at your local kitchen/bathroom store or hardware store.
I googled both soapstone and slate and it looks like neither. This is not a dark green – it’s actually a bright medium green, but does have a dull finish like slate. May need to post a picture…
You are right about the marble finish (trompe l’oeuil?). I stripped our fireplace thinking it was marble too, they had veins on it, etc. and when I scraped part of the paint, I could see a marble like finish. However, that was a very realistic finish put on slate, as I later discovered, veins and all just disappeared with the stripper. But, with all that paint on it, I do not think there was any way to slectively strip it and leave the marble finish on, so what I have left now is a slate mantel. They recommend washing it with Spic and Span which contains TSP and then using furniture polish on it, but I haven’t tried that and have left it the way it is. Only concern, oily/ greasy spills could get absorbed for good. What is miracle rock?
When you were stripping the paint off you most likely didn’t notice the bottom most layer which was a trompe loil marbled finish. They used slate/soapstone cause it’s dirt cheap. Are any of the stones different colors? I have 5 green/dark gray slate fireplaces that were stripped. My neighbors who have the same rowhouse still have the original painted surface that is so well done you would swear it’s some rare colored stone like you see in St. Peter’s church. Does it have insized lines? These were filled in with gold leaf.
Thanks – I’m going to google soapstone since I’ve never seen this type of green stone before. We used Rock Miracle to clean off the paint, now there are still streaks of it left on the stone and the grating (which looks like it was glued into place).