On 17/06/20 23:19, TimW wrote:
A small stone outbuilding I am fixing up to be reasonably warm and dry as a workshop / office / store. The floor is concrete poured onto a polythene sheet onto the earth floor. I am going to fix 2x1 battens to the concrete with some polystyrene or something between them and lay softwood t&G floorboards onto the battens. about 40-45mm in total height. I want to have a hearth in the corner for a possible woodburner if the space is used as an office.

I can do wood but I am not so good with sand and cement, so how do I make an attractive 4' x 4' hearth? Stone paving slabs? tiles? old bricks? they would all do, but how do I do it? Do I start with a timber frame around the area? Can I put any insulation in? vermiculite? Thermawrap? What do I put under the slabs or quarry tiles to make up the height? What do I bed them down on? and how do I make the joins? The heat from a stove - will it crack stone? or cause other distortions?

Advice appreciated

The woodburner in our lounge - already fitted when we bought the place -
sits on imitation York stone paving 50 mm thick, with mortar between the
stones. It is about 1500 x 800 mm overall. One of the joins has a narrow
crack along just about all its 1500 mm length. I must say that although
it serves a purpose, I've never thought the stones were particularly
attractive.

I wondered if for your purposes, to avoid mortar, you could build a
wooden frame to hold block paving (as used for drives and patios), and
if you needed to use fine, kiln-dried sand to hold them in place.

--

Jeff