A Place By The Fire

We have been trying to decide on how we want to tile the area around the solid fuel stove on Caxton. Our initial thoughts were to use white tiles with some contemporary glass borders. Then we thought that white tiles and white grout might look grubby after the fire has been cleared out a couple of times - black tiles then...

So black tiles with contemporary glass mosaic borders.. Ah but, then you try to envisage a black stove, on a black granite hearth backed by black tiles - just a bit sombre perhaps. So I started looking at stoves in boats for sale, what had other people done, what appealed? Out of twenty or so photographs we kept coming back to these two Victorian style fireplaces.

We visited a retailer in Boston, The Sack Store, that sells expensive period style furniture, wonderful tiles and solid fuel stoves, fireplaces, kitchen ranges etc. - you get the picture, it's a ladies that lunch type of emporium but nevertheless, a great place for ideas. We also found this web site, http://www.victorianfires.co.uk/jig_fireplace_tiles/index.html which has some glorious tile sets. ...

Decisions, decisions... How to achieve a look we like without having to mortgage the dogs to pay for it?