Fireplace: replace vs retile?

I live in a 1950s brick semi. The living room has a standard tiled fireplace with an old gas fire in it. The fireplace tiles are chipped and ugly. So I want something nicer. I can replace the gas fire with a better looking one, but I'm not sure what to do about the fireplace.

Take it out all together, I'm guessing this would be time consuming and hard physical work

Replace the cracked tiles, tricky cos I'd need to find matching ones and I dont really like what's there to begin with

Builing something (wooden maybe) over what is already there

Anyone out there dealt with revamping an old tiled fireplace, got any suggestions?

why not replace the tiles with new ones, or paint them!

see pendragon fireplaces for ideas, if your house is nice rip out the gas and have a real fire again, if you are not in a smokeless zone. thats what we are doing, although we have some horrible 1980s brick fireplace instead of a lovly cast iron thing like in the bedrooms, god the last owners had no taste!!

50`s is a bit of a design black hole Art Deco would be nice ,or Victorian ....you`ll never replace the tiles , it`s bad enough with modern tiles for walls/floors I`d definiely go for painting it and please get a Corgi installer to do the new fire/ check the old one if it`s staying.......they can be lethal

When we moved into out house, it had a naff wall-mounted gas fire with a rickety mdf shelf and horrid terracota tiles.

The first port of call was to get the fire removed to see what was behind it as we wanted a recessed living flame gas fire or a gas stove. Lo and behold if there wasn't a nice little opening into the chimney .

We got a company to come in and do a quotation, emphasing the fact that as having just bought our house, we wanted a simple (i.e. cheap) solution to tidy up the fireplace so it fitted in with the decorating we had done in the living room already.

The quote was in excess of £1,500

I decided to have a go myself! First job was to remove the old tiles which revealed a concrete hearth which I extended, to tidy up the edges of the laminate floor and hide some speaker wires, using timber and mdf. I then re-tiled the hearth using some gloss tiles from B & Q. We then got a Corgi chap to fit our new gas fire (bought on special offer from B & Q )

We then put up a floating shelf and mirror from those nice Scandinavians with the big blue warehouses.

The result is fantastic, even I do say so myself, and only cost us £500 in total and took me 4 days to do.

So LindsayO, I suggest rolling your sleeves up and having a go.

My advice is to firstly remve the existing tiles (hammer and bolster chisel, but remember eye protection) to see what's underneath. This isn't too hard a job, just make sure you get all the tile adhesive off too.

Then choose which tiles you like (alternatively you can get flat marble style sheets to cover your hearth with) and cover the hearth.

If you want a surround then get this done now (they usually just screw to the wall)

Finally choose a new fire and get a Corgi registered plumber/ gas fitter to install your new fire.

Then sit back and enjoy!!

Its concrete underneath the tiles - two of the front ones have fallen off, will check out pendragan

I'm a bit wary of trying to take the tiles off, , in case I get some off and then not the others, so painting may be a better option for me

but can i just use any old tile paint? does anyone know?

I think you can get a primer for painting onto ceramic materials, and then you can paint over with normal paint.

Have the tiles that have fallen off come off as whole tiles? If so you should have no problem re-fixing them and then painting.

Tiled fireplaces were very popular at one time, and probably will be again eventually, so there may be some advantages in refurbishing the one you have got as has been suggested. I have often noticed presenters on TV Makeover shows saying that a lovely old fireplace had been revealed.
Obviously in that era, people did not think they were lovely so they covered them up. These things go in cycles. At present the living coal and coke effect fires are dominating the market. But I think people will one day say they want gas fires to look like gas fires, and the fashion will change again.
Tiled surrounds have the advantage that they are not permanently stained if you spill things like red wine on them, whereas the very popular micro marble surrounds are.

Yes I'm thinking more about restoring rather than anything else. There are no really badly damaged tiles (no cracks, but some fairly big chips) any advice on repairing the chips, The biggest is about 1cm squared