Wall finish behind log burner

We are having our living room skimmed on 3 walls. The chimney breast wall has been taken back to bare brick and is being boarded and finished. The plasterer has given us two options for in the fireplace where there will eventually be a log burner. He’s said either fireproof board and plaster or to render it in sand and cement.

No doubt some of you have had similar work done so I’m just wondering if anyone had any ideas as to which would be best/last longest without cracking.

Render it. Board, even fire proof will crack over time if the burner is close to it.

My mate is a Hetas installer and that’s what he suggested, obviously I ignored him and boarded it, it cracked, Im now taking the stove back out at some point and slate tiling the back instead.

Promat Board

When lining fireplace chambers, we use the promat supalux board. Not nice to cut with the fibres contained and the dust, however it does the job very well, can be filled and overpainted and no issues of cracking or splitting due to heat.

Expensive but no call backs, so good value all round

We insulated and then used 1″ thick Grit stone slabs, plus 4″ deep grit hearth. It held heat like a massive storage heater. Perfect.

used reclaimed handmade bricks on a sandstone hearth, sealed with a couple of coats of matt varnish..As Matt OB says it acts like a giant storage heater once its got to temperature.

We have sandstone slab behind ours.

The installer did lime mortar in the hearth recess of mine. He also said how long to let it dry and to use plain emulsion paint on it

I cleaned up the brickwork, tidied the pointing and painted it black (heatpproof paint) costs nearly nowt. Won’t crack and with a matt black granite hearth and a light wall colour it looks great.

Double post oops

We have fire board and skim finish. Been in situ for three seasons and no signs of cracking yet.

Heat soaked glass panels round ours, over sized holes and screws through rubber grommets. Looks great, but we do get the odd bit of dust and ash be hind it.

Took mine back to brick cleaned it with a wire brush and sealed it with dilute PVA to keep the dust down it has been fine and I like the rustic brick finish .Or at least I did till the missus kicked me out !!

Seems like everyone has something different. Think I’m just going to go for the render. Would like to leave it bare brick but it’s a bit of a mess from where the back boiler has been put in then ripped out. There’s already a concrete hearth there but it’s flush with the floorboards so we are going to put some slate tiles on top to lift it above the expected height of the carpet.

We had ours rendered and then it had a cream heat resistant paint sprayed on. Keeps it nice and light around the stove rather than a dark recess. From the sound of it, it just came in rattle can form.

That’s the kind of finish we are aiming for spooky but our hole in the chimney breast is much bigger than that. Oddly enough the OH wants something similar to your tree to put on the wall as well.

I have polished slate as the base. It’s high maintenance to keep looking good – washing then treating with slate oil. If I were doing it again I’d go for plain split slate.

Don’t plaster it, it WILL crack no matter what plaster you use.

Another hint: if the plasterer is patching around the edges of the aperture where the old fireplace used to be, get him to chip right back three or four feet then re-plaster. The joint between old and new plaster WILL crack with differential themal expansion and you’ll get a nice line all the way around the stover.

The stove in the picture above is crying out for a nice wood mantle. We did our by fixing it to the wall with hidden mirror plates recessed into the back.

rough render and white paint for us.