After owning my home for 25 years, I began a complete change from carpet to hardwood (about 1900 sq.ft.) based upon the insight gleaned from this forum. I'm about 35% done. Without the insight presented here on insets and undercutting the brick hearth, I could not have obtained the results shown here. Opinions expressed here on Somerset brand hardwood also drove that material choice. You guys are the best!

Family room before:




Hearth undercut with Crain supersaw and diamond blade


Makita track saw prepping to edge diagonal inset field


Results

Nice work! Looks very good. Couldn't agree more about this forum.. It's been a great source of info for me too.

Looks great!!!! Did you buy or rent the Crain undercut saw? I installed my flooring under the brick hearth too but couldn't find a Crain for rent. I used a diamond wheel on an angle grinder and a diamond blade on an oscillating multi tool and a diamond bit in a rotozip....a lot of work not having the right tool.
P.S. Was the room with the fireplace featured in a magazine or on a web site....it looks familiar?

Thanks RH. The right tools, plus patience do give a good result.

Upon looking over that room in the process of conversion, my med school daughter commented, "You can't tell me you became capable of this kind of craftsmanship just by gathering information on the internet." My response was, "No, you have to add just a little bit of mechanical aptitude and patience to good information and the right tools. But without the internet information, I wouldn't know what are the right tools."

Kevin

Jimmie, I bought the Crain tool because of the size of the job. It wasn't for rent in my area. I have a brother getting ready to build a big house on his own, and figured that I could sell it to him when I finished with it and recoup some of the cost. It is a specialty tool no longer needed once floor replacement is done. I've used it in every other room where there's been carpet to trim the bottom of the baseboard as well as the door jams. It's much easier than removing and reinstalling 25 year old baseboard trim.

The fireplace is as old as the house - custom built for us almost 26 years ago. We saw a similar design in another new house in the area, and included it in our building plans. We've been very pleased with it.

Kevin

Kevin:

Beautiful work! Thanks for the comments.

Thanks Ken. High praise from one of your experience.

It's a wonderful service you provide by administering this site. There are so many details to understand to obtain a functional, durable, and visually pleasing result. This board and its many contributors are the best single source of those details I have found. Kudos!

I have something just a little bit fancier as far as inset border planned for our dining room, and will share that result with the board in the future. Presently I'm replacing the carpet and garbage wood stair treads with oak, and then replacing the poorly installed newel, handrail, and balusters. It's a lot of painstaking work, but very satisfying once completed.

Kevin

Awesomeness! I'd like it better if the inset dark wood continued in front of the fireplace.

Stephen, setting aside for a moment the issue of cutting a radius end on each of the inset diagonal runs that met the dark inset border strip, how would you bend the dark border strip to match the radius of the brick hearth to achieve your preferred look?

Kevin

Kevin, I've not done it before but it looks like fun and the results are cool.

http://hardwoodfloorsmag.com/articles/a ... 9&zoneid=2

The link shows how it's done with unfinished hardwood, but as I have used prefinished red oak I don't see how to make it happen which is why I used the layout shown. Prefinished does limit options.

Kevin