Chicken or Egg – Fireplace or hearth?

Hello,

In addition to the skirting boards in my house I am also having an engineered wood floor and slate hearth installed in my house.

The question is which goes in first?

The subfloor is currently concrete and will require levelling screed prior to the floor but I am not sure whether the floor should go in before the hearth or vice versa.

1. Hearth in first: I have to leave a gap between the hearth and the floor for floor expansion which will look unsightly – is this the case or can you get away without expansion gap in some places?

2. Floor in first: The hearth will be on top of a combustable floor which seems a bit of a strange thing to do and the step between floor and hearth may have to be greater due to regs (I am keen to keep this small in order to minimise space restrictions in a small room). But the transition between the floor and hearth would look good.

Pesky thing is I think I have to decide and get this right as justifiably I can’t expect either the floor or stove fitter to take responsibility for elements of the others job! But if I am left with something that doesn’t meet the stove regs I won’t have a conforming installation!

Any thoughts appreciated.

keppoch.

We’ve just done a hybrid of this; we installed the hearth stone first (black limestone) then as were laying the floor realised that due to the profile it would look awful; so reinstalled the hearth stone with enough space underneath to float the floor under it (the floor doesn’t support the stone at all)

In the previous house we had an engineered floor up to a slate hearth (already in place) and used some aluminium angle to make a finished edge. It looked ok; but nowhere near as ‘finished’ as the new one.

Steve

Hearth first as I would have thought that you would want to lay it on the strongest surface, then flooring around it and fireplace sat on top of the hearth.
That’s how I’ve done it in the past anyway. Steve’s raised hearth is interesting though.

I have done it lots of different ways ie laid hundreds of wooden floors up to hundreds of hearths.

The best way to do it is to have the hearth raised up above the wooden floor by a shadow gap – you give your hearth man a few offcuts of your floor, and he lays the hearth on concrete using the offcuts +1mm plastic spacers as clearance for the floor. Your floor guy, if he’s any good should then install a frame around the hearth, with the inside sitting underneath by around ¼ – ½” and scribe the floor to this frame.

If you have to get the hearth put in and don’t want it like I’ve suggested, then at least make sure it’s raised above the level of the finished floor by a half and inch anyway – completely flush with the floor is not very nice and beneath looks completely pants. I notice you mention it’s an engineered floor – if your guy knows what he’s doing, he should be able to frame the fireplace to within an eighth inch all round (which you’d hardly notice), then clear silcone the gap. As long as there’s sufficient expansion around the rest of the room, that should be fine. Make sure the hearth runs parallel to the floor level – otherwise it might be sticking up 1/2 an inch at one side and 1/4 at the other – this tends to look shit also.