10 new uses for old fireplaces

Make a wood still life

This urbane San Francisco parlor includes many bold touches, including an industrial-style lamp by Michael McEwen, an architectural photo by Michael Wolf and a fauteuil upholstered in cowhide. But the centerpiece of the room is the original fireplace from the 1920s that is clad in rust and cream-veined marble.

Interior designer Geoffrey De Sousa designed the mahogany-clad room and styled the fireplace with large birch-bark strips. The result is a dramatic and unusual wood still life that immediately captures attention.

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Display flowers

This polished home in Massachusetts got a fresh look from Connor Homes of Middlebury, Vt., that includes a handcrafted colonial-blue mantel. When the brick-faced fireplace isn't in use, the hearth is adorned with pots of bright-red geraniums, which add a welcome spot of color in what would otherwise be a dark hole. 

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Create a candle-scape

For this historic row house in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C., interior designers Brett Sugerman and Giselle Loor from b + g design took a fresh approach.

"We were designing for a young, hip family," Loor says, "so we really wanted to liven up the family room."

The design duo incorporated bold strokes of complex black, brick red and oatmeal. For the original cast-stone fireplace, the designers built a candle-scape of soy-wax pillars that add needed warmth and interest.

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Arrange a tableau of candlesticks

This living room, designed by Jay Jeffers, principal at Jeffers Design Group in California, includes a vintage coffee table by Charles Hollis Jones, a custom-fitted ice-blue carpet bound with brown leather and a pair of silk-upholstered, tufted benches.

But the standout piece is the fireplace, which features a sea-foam green, light blue and silver mosaic surround, hand-applied by Santa Rosa, Calif., artist Ellen Blakely. Inventively, the owner uses the fireplace to display her collection of crystal and mercury glass candlesticks.

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Install an antique summer cover

Many 19^th-century fireplace-owners installed summer covers or summer doors, which acted as dampers so cold air wouldn't come into the house from the chimney. Many of these summer doors were donated to the war effort in the 1940s to be used as scrap metal.

But the original summer doors remain in this 1889 mansion in St. Paul, Minn., as a permanent ornament for the unused fireplace.

This blue-green fireplace is in one of the mansion's upper bedrooms. The cast-metal summer door here has a classic bust relief in the center, surrounded by a fanciful pattern of suns and burning torches.

Many antique suppliers now sell restored fireplace summer doors. The trick is finding a door that fits.

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Slide show:  10 traditional fireplaces

Display a collection

Another creative Brooklynite is antiques dealer Maya Marzolf of Le Grenier. For her 1870 brownstone, Marzolf took a fun approach to her modest brick fireplace.

Marzolf added a carved wooden mantel and insert, both of which she discovered separately in upstate New York and painted. On that crisp white tableau, Marzolf added her funky collection of skulls and skeletons, which she has amassed since she was a child. Some pieces come from Mexico, Jamaica, Brazil and New Orleans.

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Slide show:  10 traditional fireplaces

Use an accent color

Interior designer Juliet Pegrum, owner of Juliet Pegrum Design, took an unusual approach with this apartment on New York's Upper West Side. She bricked off the cavernous entrance to the old fireplace and painted the brick a subtle lavender-gray to complement an upholstered womb chair nearby.

By doing away with the dark fireplace but leaving the mantel, Pegrum created a simple place to display flowers without shadows.

• Video: A DIY fireplace can be easy
  
  
• 'Listed': Is your fireplace politically incorrect?

Slide show:  10 steps to keep home fires burning safely

Design Center Get ideas for your home with our inspirational rooms and direct access to real products. Click here to begin exploring

Hide it (What fireplace?)

To make the best of a fireplace that was sealed with concrete blocks when he bought the house, John Pisello worked with his contractors to use the space for a media room. A television now sits in place of the hearth. Surrounding it are built-in bookshelves that display Pisello's collection of midcentury radios.

The original fireplace mantel was recovered and used elsewhere in the house.

• MSN Lifestyle: Budget decorating and makeover ideas
  
  
• Video: How to clean a fireplace

Slide show:  10 traditional fireplaces