Fireplace: Design & Decorating Ideas (Better Homes and Gardens) (Better Homes and Gardens Home)

I bought this book and 2 others to help me in designing our fireplace. I found it very helpful with a variety of designs and situations. However, I found the Taunton book on fireplaces to be my favorite, "Fire Places: A Practical Design Guide to Fireplaces and Stoves Indoors and Out".

for the money, you cant go wrong. could be more photos. perhaps a little out of date, perhaps faux and veneer stone mfg website may be better source for ideas.

I do custom carpentry in the Metro Detroit area, and updating fireplace surrounds and mantles seems to be the new hot trend here, so I wanted to get a new book for ideas. I thumbed through this book at lowes before buying it for less on amazon. I have been very pleased with this book because it has a lot of quality photos of a wide variety of fireplace styles. Some books of this nature have too many designs that, while striking, just are not practical for most homes. This book did not have that problem. In fact, I will likely need to buy a second copy because my customers spend so much time looking through the first copy over and over again, that it is getting prematurely worn. My only complaint about the book is that several of the designs do not meet current code requirements. In our area, as it is in most of the country, code requires 12" of non combustible material from the opening of the firebox to any combustible material such as a wooden mantle. Many of these photos appear to be lucky if they have 6", requiring me to alter the design, and therefor the appearance in order to meet code. This is a minor issue in comparison to the great ideas in this book, but I wanted to at least mention it. I would definately recommend buying it.

This book was a gift for my husband. He felt that it was a little "too rich" and impractical for the majority of homeowners. It had some good examples.

This publication has some nice fireplace photos, but I was a litle disapointed that there was a "parts list" included incase you wanted to construct one.

We're painting our fireplace and wanted to see different ideas. The magazine had great ideas, beautiful pictures, and helped with our design goals. The magazine was in perfect condition and arrived very quickly. We were pleased and would order from this seller again!

The magazine was more about showing the different fireplaces than it was about decorating them. It was not much help for someone wanting decorating ideas.

Great book to get some ideas abt. different styles of fireplaces. Would strongly recommend if you are in the market, but don't know what you're exactly looking for. Service was fast and as described by seller.