St. Louis Stone Fireplace

From roasting marshmallows to sipping hot chocolate, enduring winter has as many charms as it does hardships. One of the mainstays of winter luxury is the fireplace, and while you may only end up using your fireplace a dozen times or so during the few months of cold temperatures, it will look great during the rest of the year as a decorative centerpiece for your living room or bedroom, and in some cases, your entire home. Whether you're interested in installing a new fireplace or need service on your current fireplace, we've recently helped homeowners in University City, St. Charles, Brentwood, Edwardsville, and homeowners throughout the immediate and greater St. Louis area find the right contractor for all their residential fireplace needs.

Brick and Stone Fireplace Design
The design of your fireplace can be wide-ranging from whether to install brick or stone (and if stone, which stone?), whether you want your fireplace to be gas or wood-burning, and to what extent you want to invest in your fireplace surrounds. As warm and cozy as you want your fireplace to be during the autumn and winter months, it can and should be a decorative accent the rest of the year. This possible centerpiece of a room can be a hallmark of your home and can even help your home sell when it comes time, as many prospective homeowners imagine a fireplace for their dream home. Many homes have trouble with retrofitting a fireplace inside the house. In this case, you might consider building an outdoor fireplace. These units are great for outdoor cooking, bonfires, and a landscaping accent. They also eliminate the complexity of adjoining a fireplace and chimney to your home.

Stone Fireplaces in St. Louis: Installation, Cost, and Contractors
Of course, the more extensive the design, the more expensive the installation. For a custom-built brick or stone fireplace, your budget probably needs to be set somewhere near $5,000, and to do it up right, you may need more than this. Prefabricated fireplaces, on the other hand, can be purchased and installed for a little more than a $1,000 all the way down to just a few hundred. This means that no budget should be too tight to get some type of fireplace in your home, but you should consider splurging because despite the steep price difference, you'll know where your money went. St. Louis masonry contractors can create true interior transformations in many cases. Keep in mind that you may need to plan ahead for these custom-built projects, while a prefabricated unit can be set up in a day, stone fireplaces in St. Louis more likely need a week to complete.

Fireplace Safety Tips from your St. Louis Fire Department

• Make sure the chimney is cleaned and inspected before lighting a fire in the fireplace.
  
• The cleaning should be done at least once per year.
  
• Make sure the damper is open before starting a fire.
  
• Use a metal mesh screen in front of the fireplace opening.
  
• Leave glass doors open while burning a fire.
  
• Never use flammable liquids to start a fire.
  
• Use only seasoned hardwood in your fireplace.
  
• Never leave a fire in a fireplace unattended.
  
• Soak hot ashes in water and place them in a covered metal container outside your home.

St. Louis Stone Fireplace Cleaning and Maintenance
Some of these safety tips are, naturally, more obvious than others. Some may seem like nitpicking, but having your fireplace cleaned every year, especially for moderate to heavy use, is absolutely essential. When a fire burns in your fireplace the byproduct goes up your chimney is vented outside your home. Some of this byproduct sticks to the chimney walls, slowly lining them with creosote. Should this creosote continue to build it can sometimes catch fire, and when this happens disaster and tragedy tend to ensure. A fireplace chimney is among the hottest residential fires possible and can even cause your chimney to explode, engulfing your home, your property, and, possibly, worse. Do not, do not, do not take this vital piece of fireplace for granted. Better to be safe than sorry hardly encapsulates the horrible possibilities should this happen.

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