River City Sammon: Fireplace Makeover

It always seems to be that you miss the best things about the season you're not currently in... For example, in winter I always miss sitting outside and soaking up sun. There is one thing I always end up missing in the summertime... sitting around the fireplace. There's something so magical and calming about warming by the fire, listening to the soft crackle of burning wood. Obviously, I haven't been doing any of that lately, but I since I was thinking about our magical fireplace, I thought I'd share with you the transformation that took place earlier this year.
Before:
Our old fireplace was set up above a brick, stair-like structure. I'm pretty sure the casing of the fireplace hadn't been changed since the 50's when our house was built. As you can see below, it was in need of a lot of TLC.

Our original thought was just to update the fireplace cover, but Vladimir had a vision and decided to rip the whole thing out.

After:
Since Vladimir works in granite and granite is easily accessible to us at the moment, we decided to take that route. He filled in the space where the brick stair used to be with flat black granite (the same type we used in our kitchen) He installed new fireplace doors, which are tinted glass outlined in gray. He made a special square cut of granite to fit precisely around it. It's modern, clean, and fits the rest of our space perfectly.

In the future we are hoping to add some sort of mantel above the fireplace, but we're not exactly sure what type. We've been looking for a rustic piece of wood, maybe. Something like this...