How to Deal with an Irregular Fireplace Hearth

We remodeled a lake house with a very large stone fireplace in the living room. With a wall of windows facing the lake, the traffic and the light flooding across the floor, we chose to use engineered wood flooring for that room. However, the engineered flooring cannot be attached to the sub floor or surrounding walls. With the fireplace hearth having such an irregular surface edge at the floor, we were at a loss for how to trim out the edge running along and down the sides of the fireplace - it is seven inches wide and juts out into the room about four feet We came up with a stone mote idea. My husband made a 1"x1" band of trim to match the floor at the base of the hearth and out about 1" as well, mitered the corners and only attached it at the walls on either side. The I used small river rocks (pebbles) and poured them into the small mote his trim had provided. We were even able to bury a speaker wire for our surround sound in it from one side of the room to the other. Now the floor floats as it should, and the stone looks nice with the stone on the fireplace.