Your experience with slate as a hearth pad please

You should seal it. I had rough slate slabs in my last house for a hearth. Looks nice. Scratches. Slate is pretty soft.
Needs to be resealed every few years depending on wear.

Hides dirt well.

I have had good luck with my home cheapo slate. I sealed it 6 years ago and i have not touched it since. It still looks good.

I just bought some slate at Lowes for a DIY hearth project. I hear it's kind of a PITA to cut, but the price was right and it looks nice.

Here is a site with some good info.

http://www.baneclene.com/articles/slate.html

CarbonNeutral said:

Just found some really nice grey slate with a nice silver metallic fleck to it - will look great under our soon to be delivered ivory enamel F500 Oslo.

It's not cheap at $7 per sq ft, but I don't particularly mind the cost as long as I don't have to replace it in two years.

It will be on top of concrete board and ceramic board.

Any comments from people with slate hearths - wear, spalling, cracks, etc.

One caveat - the stove will be moved once a year for cleaning (don't ask), but I do intend to build a little wheeled cart that I can slide under the stove, lift the stove on jacks and move away from the stove pipes...

Thanks.

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I went with slate . . . namely because I had been given two free boxes of 1/4 inch slate flooring. I must admit after going a year with it that I am rather pleased with the look and the wear. I used a gray colored grout and combined with the dark slate I found like others that it tends to hide the dirt well. I also agree -- make sure you seal it. I went with a matte finish for a more stone like look -- this will help preserve the stone and make clean up easier.

I have had no issues with wear, spalling, cracks or scratches . . . but I also don't move my stove, I'm careful not to drop wood or tools on the hearth and I wipe up ash spills or other messes right away. I also made sure the base of the hearth was rugged and not likely to have much flex to it.

Since I had quarter inch tile (random sized) using a tile saw made cutting the slate wicked easy . . . thicker stuff might be a bit more challenging.

If I had to do the hearth over or build another one I would most definitely consider slate again as I have been very happy with its performance.

We did our 3' x 8' hearth and 4' x 8' backwall with natural slate that was 3/4" thick. we purchased all 80+ of them from lowes and they cut 20+ pieces in half for me for free. i didn't have to cut any of them. For grout I used a platnum grey and filled the spaces with some kind of irregularity and not enirely flush for a rustic look. I later sealed it with a low gloss sealer (4 coats) and it never stains and is easy to clean. I 've dropped many peices of logs on it without a crack or chip. The only difficult part was hanging slate on the wall due to its weight.