American River Dr Primary Suite Fireplace Remodel

The original fireplace was easy to overlook — by design, though not intentionally. The tile surround had been painted to match the surrounding walls, flattening what should have been the room’s most prominent feature into the background. More disruptive was the structural reality: a load-bearing post on the left side of the fireplace projected from the wall, creating an asymmetry that was both visually distracting and functionally limiting. Any treatment of the fireplace wall had to account for it.

Yvonne Harty’s design addressed both issues in a single move. By framing a 4″ bumpout — a shallow chase running the full height of the wall — the post would be absorbed into the new plane of the wall, hidden from view and balanced by the extended framing on the right. The fireplace would no longer sit off-center in a lopsided alcove. It would anchor a symmetrical, intentional surround.

What looked like a relatively contained scope carried a specific logistical challenge: the primary suite sits on the second floor, accessed by a staircase with glass rail. Every piece of material going up had to be sized and handled carefully. And the wall itself — running 15 feet from floor to ceiling — exceeded standard framing height, requiring a more deliberate approach than a typical residential partition.

The solution was 22-gauge steel stud framing for the majority of the chase. Steel studs are significantly lighter than dimensional lumber at this scale, which made the carry up the staircase manageable. More importantly, steel studs offer a precision that wood can’t always match — at 15 feet, even minor irregularities in a wood-framed wall can telegraph through large-format tile. With steel, the team was able to achieve walls that were nearly perfectly plumb and flat, a critical foundation for the 24×48 tile installation to follow.

For the tile backer, DensShield was used across the majority of the wall surface — lighter and cleaner to work with than cement board, and well-suited for the vertical tile field. Traditional cement board was reserved for the area immediately surrounding the firebox, where the heat exposure warranted it.

The original unit was replaced with an FPX ProBuilder 54″ Linear Series gas fireplace — a substantial linear insert that fills the updated surround with a wide, low flame profile. Copper glass media was selected to complement the warm wood tones throughout the home, adding depth and warmth to the flame bed. Critically, the new unit includes full remote control capability, so the homeowners can manage the fireplace from bed without a second thought.

Yvonne’s material selections were chosen to make a quiet statement — sophisticated without competing with the home’s existing warmth. The field tile is 24×48 Marca Corona StoneCloud Grey, a large-format porcelain with a soft, textured stone appearance. At this scale, the oversized format minimizes grout lines and gives the wall a continuous, architectural quality that smaller tiles simply can’t achieve.

The tile was installed floor to ceiling, uninterrupted — a deliberate choice that reinforces the full 15-foot height of the wall and gives the fireplace genuine visual weight in the room. The perimeter is trimmed with Schluter Jolly Brushed Stainless, a clean metal edge profile that transitions the tile to the surrounding drywall without a raw cut edge. Grout throughout is Mapei Color Plus FA in Silver, selected to blend with the tile rather than draw attention to the joints.