Your home’s fireplace gives you comfort, heat, and enjoyment through the cold months of winter. However, it still has a significant impact on your home’s appearance and interior design throughout the rest of the year. For that reason, many homeowners in Rochester like to will make fireplace updates to improve its efficiency, performance, and esthetics. This allows them to have a fireplace that they love with the performance that cold New York winters demand. But what kind of changes do you want to make to update your fireplace? In this article, we’ll give you several options to consider that are common to fireplace updates, helping you through the process.
A Look at Common Fireplace Updates
Insert Update for Performance
One of the first fireplace updates that many Rochester homeowners look at due to mediocre performance is updating or adding a fireplace insert. A fireplace insert allows you to get more heat out of each fire, improving efficiency, while often using a blower system to move the air further into and around your home. This update is especially effective in a home that has no insert or has an older insert that is failing, so adding the insert boosts efficiently dramatically.
Fireplace Appearance Updates
The part of your fireplace that you can easily see serves more of an appearance purpose instead of a functional one, though it is designed to be fire resistant. Over time, the appearance of your fireplace may grow tiresome or appear aged that you don’t like, so updates such as updating your hardware to include grates, screens, and other items, adding surrounding shelving for additional storage, or painting the existing surround. This gives you a beautiful appearance to your fireplace that you can enjoy.
Change the Fuel
Traditionally, wood has been a fireplace fuel for many centuries. However, moving the food into and the ash out of your home can be messy and require a lot of extra cleaning. Dirt, bark, and ash can get all over your home. When you change the type of fuel needed for your fireplace, you can remove a lot of the extra work involved in a wood burning fireplace, with electric or gas fireplaces requiring only a little cleaning and maintenance to work well and look wonderful.
Dress It Up
When you’re going through the process of upgrading your home’s interior to a more refined look, your fireplace can keep you from realizing a truly luxe appearance. Consider adding a natural stone surround or tiling such as granite or marble, polished metal, built-in cabinets or shelving for art or special items, or upgrading the mantle to dress up your fireplace and give you an amazing appearance.
Surround Updates
In many cases, the surround for your fireplace may not have an appearance that matches well with the rest of your home or may not be of the quality you’d like. In many cases, removing an existing surround that you find dull in favor of one that you enjoy is fairly straightforward. Consider adding contrasting tile with a bold pattern to add a punch of color, sleek options that deliver a more modern appearance, or other looks that fit your style.
Make It Modern
When you’ve got a more modern appearance in your home or want to update your fireplace to a more contemporary appearance, a modern fireplace can provide you with a sleek, modern appearance. For most installations, you’ll determine what type of gas or electric fireplace you want to install, then decide on a number of distinctive style options including glossy marble or sparkling granite, a range of stone or glass options for the base, and many other possibilities.
Chimney Lining to Improve Performance
When you have issues with smoke building up in your home when you start a fire, the issue may be a poor draft. If you’ve added or upgraded your insert, your chimney may also need a change to effectively move the smoke out of your home. A chimney lining provides you with a chimney space that is spaced for your specific appliance, making it easier to get solid, robust performance out of your fireplace.
When you consider these fireplace updates for your Rochester home, you’ll be able to get the style that you want in your home to complement your interior appearance. When considering this work, you want to make sure you’re working with experienced contractors who understand your entire fireplace and chimney system. At Four Winds Chimney in Rochester, our fireplace remodeling and renovation professionals bring four-generations of chimney expertise and are happy to answer any questions you might have. Why not reach out today to get started?
