How to Build a DIY Electric Fireplace Surround

You guys, this little cave living room was so boring only a month ago, but with our DIY electric fireplace surround and our big, bold tile, it’s totally changed the vibe in here and we spend about as much time staring at it as we do watching TV. Here’s how we did it.

Who doesn’t love a fireplace? It instantly adds warmth, a focal point and cozy vibes (even if you’re permanently glistening in the Florida heat like us).

Since building this fireplace on a blank wall in our living room, we literally turn on the flames every night no matter the weather because you can have the visuals of the fire without the heat. The build was relatively complex (read: a lot of math), but as usual, taking it step-by-step got us there in the end.

Tools & Materials

• Touchstone Home 36” recessed fireplace
• Drill
• Saw (we used both our table saw and miter saw, but you could potentially have your local hardware store make cuts for you)
• Screws
• Stud finder
• Crowbar
• 2×4
• ½-inch plywood
• Drawer slides
• Cementboard
• Boxcutter
• Tile
• Mortar
• Grout
• Grout float
• Trowel
• Nail gun and nails
• Wood filler
• Tile spacers
• Tile caulk
• Bucket
• Sander
• Mantel materials – read our separate post here for the mantel instructions
• Paint

How we built our DIY electric fireplace surround

Think of this build in four sections – the base, the actual insert support, the mantel and the top. We built from the bottom to the top, but each element is secured to the wall on its own to make it really structurally sound. Here’s how to make your own DIY electric fireplace surround.

We won’t give a full breakdown of the measurements of our fireplace because it’s very specific to our room (and some of the measurements are probably a little smaller/weirder than we would recommend if we weren’t working around our front door), so make sure you do all your measurements beforehand!

Remove your baseboard

In order for the whole structure to be super sturdy and flush with the wall, you’ll need to remove the baseboard in the section where the fireplace will go. We used a crowbar and a multitool to do that, but you could also remove the whole section, cut it down, and nail it back into place if you don’t have a multitool.

Build the base structure

Start by making a rectangle out of 2×4 that’s the height and length of your hearth (minus the 1/2″ or 3/4″ thickness of the plywood that you’ll wrap it in), then secure it to the wall using 3-inch screws into as many studs as you can. Create the rest of the 2×4 cube and attach it to that wall brace. We used pocket hole screws to attach this all together, but if you don’t have a pocket hole jig you could use regular screws and just pre-make the cube then attach it to the wall.

Next, cover the cube in plywood. If you’re planning on drawers like we did, then wrap the sides and top, but if you’re going to just make it like a regular hearth, you can go ahead and wrap the whole thing in plywood.

We nailed pieces of 1×3 to frame the front edges so it looked more finished, but it largely won’t be seen from the outside until you open the drawers.

Start building upward

Next, you’ll be building your fireplace insert support.

A quick note on our fireplace: we love it. We partnered with Touchstone Home Products on this DIY electric fireplace surround using their 36” sideline recessed electric fireplace, but all the thoughts on the product and instructions for building came right from these two old geese that run this blog.

We cannot recommend these inserts enough because the manual made it really easy to design our own fireplace structure, it just plugs into an outlet like any other appliance, and it has different settings like the option to heat the room or just have the ambience of fire with the visual of flames.

Anyway, to make the fireplace support, you’ll make another cube-like structure but much more shallow. Our fireplace insert was only about 6 inches deep so the overall middle section is about 8 inches deep, and we added a rectangular opening across the front that holds the fireplace insert (with about a half-inch of wiggle room to get the whole situation in place without wanting to cry).

Just like the base, secure the middle section to the wall by screwing into as many studs as possible.

Add the mantel to the top

We’re very fancy and important, so we built a mantel that has hidden storage. We ran our cords down from the TV mount, through the mantel, down behind the fireplace and into the outlet at the base of our wall, so it was kind of a maze of holes all throughout constructing this piece.

Read more about how we built the mantel here (we separated it into a different post because this is already a cumbersome tutorial).

Construct the top section

This was the easiest part of the build because it has really no weight or complex structure. We literally just screwed some horizontal 2×4 pieces to two vertical 2×4 pieces and attached it to the wall. The horizontal pieces only serve as a wider area to hit a stud and secure to the wall, if that makes sense, so you can screw in anywhere along that area and the vertical part will be sturdy.

We made a little rectangle to go in the middle around the TV mount just to make the end result look more finished and attached that to the wider structure.

Again, we were just taking it step-by-step and figuring it out as we went.

Cementboard that bad boy

Because we tiled the whole upper portion, we used cementboard as the surround because our research told us it was a more solid foundation for tile (read: no warping or shrinking which could lead to cracking).

This is exactly the same as drywall, just a little bit more crumbly, so to cut it down to size you’ll just use a box cutter and score along the line you want cut, then use a swift old knee to that seam and it’ll snap right off.

Fun fact: I did karate as a kid and once did a jump kick demonstration in front of my whole small town as a quant little community event and I’ve never felt like more of a badass. Channel your inner 10-year-old Emma for the knee kick, it’ll help.

To secure the pieces to the fireplace structure, just use masonry screws and drill like you would any other kind of material to a stud.

Start tiling

I was itching to use this tile the second it showed up. I’d had it saved in my bookmarks forever wanting to use it somewhere because it’s so bold and old world and vintage but modern at the same time, I just love it (and it was totally worth the 857 attempts at convincing Alex to go bold on the tile to get it done).

We’d only tiled once before in our guest bathroom at our old house and that was pretty standard subway tile.

We ended up buying a wet tile saw for this project because between figuring out a brand new tool, working only in baby nap times and probably needing to cut tile again for other projects soon, we figured it was more cost-effective to buy than to rent for the weekend. However, renting was pretty cost-effective from our Home Depot, so it’s definitely worth checking out.

How to actually tile

Basically you’ll mix up the thinset (you can buy pre-mixed but it’s cheaper to buy the powder you mix with water) until it’s a peanut butter-like consistency. You want it to be thin enough to spread, but you don’t want it to be slopping off your trowel.

The general idea is you’ll use your trowel to swipe some of the thinset onto the cement board (only enough that you’ll be able to add the tile in the next 10-ish minutes), use the notched side to make sure the thinset has grooves in it, and press the tiles into place with spacers in between.

Keep going until you’ve used all of your full tiles. If you want a more in-depth example, check out our fireplace highlight on our Instagram.

We let the full tiles set and then came back a different day to cut down all the partial pieces with the wet tile saw. Once those were done, we left them to dry off and then did the same process, thinsetting them in place.

Grout the tile

We mixed up grout in the same way as the thinset, but again, you can also buy pre-mixed which is easier and probably a bit less messy. Using a grout float, scoop up some of the grout and swipe it across the tiles, making sure to go at different angles so there aren’t any gaps and each line is pretty equally filled.

After about 10 to 15 minutes, take a grout sponge that’s been dipped in water and wrung out so it’s barely wet, and rub it over the tile in small circles. That’ll remove most of the grout haze, but if there’s some remaining don’t worry because you can try again the next morning or use a grout haze product if it’s really stubborn.

Add corner trim pieces

This is totally optional, but we added some outside corner trim pieces to the whole structure mostly because our math was off and we had a weird gap in the tile at the edges that this fixed. We painted the trim the same black as the hearth would be, and added a bead of construction adhesive to the back. We used painters tape to secure the trim pieces in place while they dried because it took a good few hours.

Optional: build hearth drawers

Honestly, I’m going to skim over this because I am as good at building drawers as I am at grocery shopping. Like, I’ll get it done, but it’ll be inefficient and I’ll definitely forget some things and have to go back a few times.

The idea is to install the drawer slides and make boxes for the drawers just a little bit smaller than that opening. Measure at least 1,000 times and godspeed to you.

There are lots of ways to build drawer fronts, but we were trying to make it look as seamless as possible, so we had the drawers sit flush with the front of the structure, then nailed two simple pieces of plywood to the front of the drawers.

Paint fireplace hearth

We filled all the nail holes on both the drawer fronts and hearth, then sanded everything down and primed the whole thing. We added two coats of black paint, a color called Dark Secret by Behr, and waited for it to dry before adding the drawers back on.

We added these subtle drawer pulls to the top center of the drawers so they blended in with the black color.

Add tile caulk for the finishing touch

This stuff is magic. We got tile caulk in the same color as the grout we used, and went around all the edges where the tiles connected to the wall, to the mantel and to the hearth for a really finished look to our DIY electric fireplace surround.

And you’re done! If you’re like us, this will probably take a month on and off to get done, but it’s so so worth it. If you make a DIY electric fireplace surround based on ours, make sure to tag us on Instagram or send us an email – we’d love to see! In case you missed it, here are the tools we used to build our DIY electric fireplace surround.

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