Fabulous Fakes Dear Suzy,
I have always loved the look of a mantel and fireplace in a house but with
the hot weather in Austin, I am reluctant to undergo the expense of
constructing a real wood-burning fireplace. I am somewhat handy and would like
to tackle this project myself. Since it would go against the wall, I would also
need to create the illusion of plaster “piping” going up to the ceiling. Got
any tips? — Joyce
Dear Joyce,
I grew up in the Sixties, an era known as the Faux Years. There was fake
marble in our bathrooms, fake cheese on our Sloppy Joes, fake brick vinyl floor
in our kitchen, fake wood paneling in the dining room. We had a fake Christmas
tree of pink aluminum and fake potted plants, which nonetheless lost all their
leaves. We had fake ham in the form of Spam and fake leather sofas.
Our popsicles were fake grape and fake cherry. We went to Disneyland where the
robotic animals on the safari cruise were fake, the rain in the Tiki Tiki room
was fake, and the water in the lagoons was a fake Tidy Bowl blue.
Reality, obviously, was to be stringently avoided. I loved it.
I’ve since become less enamored with fakes, with a few notable exceptions:
fake furs, fake hair color, fake bacon, and fake fireplaces. We haven’t had the
best luck with real fireplaces we’ve had built or have tried to build
ourselves. Most smoke. One at our rent house is sinking into the ground, taking
a corner of the house with it, because the mason we hired failed to pour a
sturdy foundation for the three-ton chimney. For several years, a family of
squirrels claimed the fireplace at our last house as their own. Then there’s
the wood-chopping factor, which you can either consider a ritual that grounds
you, or a bothersome chore. These worries, along with concerns about air
pollution, make electric logs, which flicker at the flick of a switch and can
appear surprisingly real after the third martini, very appealing. (I’ve seen
them at “antique” stores for $85 and the Patio Haus still has a few new ones in
stock, starting at $150.)
As for the fake “piping,” this can be easily constructed out of plywood or a
wood frame covered with wallboard or even foamboard which you could tape and
float with drywall compound, then paint. In one house we built (where the
fireplace actually worked), the chimney was outside, but we created an indoor
Taos-esque mantel out of plywood and stucco. If you look around at actual
fireplaces, you’ll notice that many of the chimneys are outside and there is no
interior “pipe”. You’ll want to be careful not to make your fake too realistic
or you’ll run the risk of having some house guest make the mistake my
brother-in-law did when he moved into a rent home here in Austin. The leasing
agent assured him the fireplace was real and he believed her, never bothering
to look up the non-existent chimney or look up on the roof to see if there was
a smoke stack leading out of the house before he ordered up a cord of oak and
lit a giant fire one cold evening. Within minutes, the house had filled with
smoke and he and his wife were tossing blazing logs out into the street. This
was way too much reality for him, so he moved back to California.
This article appears in February 21 • 1997 and February 21 • 1997 (Cover).