I have an open brick fireplace in my living room that I am looking at recovering. The brick is a god awful yellow with red mortar. My plan is to cover 6″ around the opening and the hearth with a marble tile. The rest of the fireplace will be done in either maple or cherry. My question would be is marble an acceptable tile (temperature wise) to be used around a fireplace opening, and is there a special mortar I should be using? Any advice would be appreciated.
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While marble is soft and the lines in it are natural 'fault lines' that could break, these really don'y have any problem to do with a fireplace as much as with a poor surface prep. As long as your brick are not cracked or the mortar joints, it should be fine. i fyou have concerns, you may want to look into Scluters Kerdi as a possible solution.
As for mortar, yes you do need a special mortar for natural stone as it is not a baked clay and isn't as absorbant as one. Therefore you will need one designed for natural stone such as Custom Building Products Marble Granite Mortar Mix sold at most HDs.
Marble should also have a small grout joint (1/8" or less) so that you can use a non-sanded grout. Also you may want to seal the grout well as soot from the fireplace could cause cleaning issues. For more info, call CBP at 800-272-8786.
I've done that before and lived with it for years and there was no cracking at all. I used Taiwan green marble. I first removed most of the paint from the brick with stripper. What didnt come off wasn't ever going to so...I then used thinset as was discribed in the last post but that was only because it was green marble large 12x12 tiles which supposidly cup. I've done it with regular thinset as well on different jobs with no issues at all. Just be sure to use white or dark thinset depending on the color of the tile because the color will bleed through if its a drastic opposite.
Be well
andy
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