I need to redesign our fireplace. We were thinking of hiring someone to do a floor to ceiling stackstone/legdestone and putting a mantel shelves which would cost around $2K. But wifey wanted to change the 10 yr old carpet to hardwood as well which is more than $2k materials alone. Now we were just thinking or replacing the tile surrounds around the fireplace with maybe slate and do the hardwood floors. I am just wondering of what would that look like or stick to the plan which may take us a while to save for the project.
Your thoughts are appreciated. 
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Based on your furniture design, it looks to me like you do have a transitional bent. The little floating mantle shelf isn't doing anything for me right now. You could give it a bit more importance by beefing up the moulding.
An alternative (and a bit modern) would be to remove the mantel entirely, replace the tiles with large marble tiles or another luxurious stone, increase the size of the mirror and you would have a showstopper.
I think either option would look great, plus cost you FAR less than going with a stone face.
Hello matrix_dot_ca,
The following articles may be helpful for your fireplace project:
Built-Ins For An Off-Centre Fireplace
Designing Built-In Shelves
You can also put this question to our Ask A Designer column. Contact Cameron here.
I hope that helps! Good luck with the fireplace!
Please let me know if you have any other questions.
Gwen McAuley (gmcauley at hhmedia.com)
If you really want to do the ledgestone save up the money and stick with the original plan. In my own personal experience I've found that if I try to save money by getting something that might be my second choice I'm usually disappointed and sometimes end up having to replace it for what I really want. We just had ledgestone installed yesterday on our gas fireplace and it looks amazing. So happy with it.
Hope this helps with your decision!