Pleasant Hearth fireplace door sizing guide

Start with the kind of fireplace you have

Every glass door in the Pleasant Hearth catalog is made for a masonry, wood-burning fireplace, and none of them fits a prefabricated one. A masonry fireplace was built in place from brick, block or stone, and its firebox is lined with firebrick set in mortar.

Factory-built fireplaces arrive as one metal unit. Metal side walls, thin molded panels where firebrick would be, or a metal plate with a model number inside the opening usually give it away. If that is what your flashlight finds, our doors are not made for your fireplace, and the maker of that unit is the one to ask about a door.

Measure the opening in four places

Hand-laid brick is rarely square, so one width and one height tell you too little. Measure the masonry opening itself, edge to edge on the brick or stone, not the narrower back wall of the firebox. Read each figure to the nearest 1/8 inch with a steel tape.

Write down all four readings:

• the width across the top, just below the lintel
• the width across the bottom, just above the hearth
• the height on the left side, from hearth to lintel
• the height on the right side, from hearth to lintel

Use the smallest width and the smallest height

A door frame is a rigid rectangle, so the tightest point of the opening decides the size. Keep the smaller of your two widths and the smaller of your two heights. Those are the numbers to compare with the opening range printed on each door's page.

When one of them lands exactly on the edge of a range, measure again across the middle of the opening. A chipped brick or a thick mortar joint can move a single reading, and at the edge of a range that is enough to change the size.

Check that the lintel and hearth are flat

Our doors mount on the surface. The frame sits outside the opening and rests against the face of the fireplace. So the face has to be flat wherever the frame touches it: along the lintel, down both sides and across the hearth.

Lay a straightedge or a level along each of those four strips. Light under the edge shows a hollow, and a straightedge that rocks shows a hump. Mortar standing proud of the brick, a hearth stone set lower at one end or a rough fieldstone face will stop the frame from sitting flush. Even the face out before the door goes on, or have a mason do it.

The frame is also wider than the opening. On most collections that print a frame size, a Small or Medium frame is 37.5 inches wide and a Large frame 43.5 inches, and the Gavin frames run 38.75 and 44.5 inches. Mark that width on the wall, centered on the opening, and keep the straightedge going out to your marks.

How Small, Medium and Large relate to your opening

Small and Medium doors cover the same widths, 30 to 37 inches. Height is what separates them: a Medium door fits openings 25.5 to 32.5 inches tall, and a Small door starts lower, at 22.5 inches. A Large door keeps the Medium height range and moves the width up to 36 to 43 inches.

The Small height range differs between collections. Small Ascot, Alpine, Fenwick and Alsip doors reach openings 29.5 inches tall, while Small Carlisle and Clairmont doors stop at 27.5 inches. So a smallest height between those two figures points you to a particular Small collection, or up to Medium.

Openings 36 or 37 inches wide sit inside both the Medium and the Large range. There the frame decides, since a Large frame needs 3 more inches of flat face on each side than a Medium one.

A few sizes and finishes print a frame size but no opening range, and some print neither. For those, send the Pleasant Hearth team your four readings and the door you have in mind before you order. The Fillmore glass screen mounts the same way as our doors and comes in Medium and Large, with the same opening ranges.

Measuring for a fireplace screen

A freestanding screen works the other way round from a door. It stands on the hearth in front of the opening and has to be wider and taller than it, so your largest width and largest height are the figures that count. The U.S. Fire Administration advises a glass or metal screen in front of the fireplace to stop embers and sparks, and a screen that stops short of an edge leaves that edge open.

Compare those readings with the overall size printed on each screen's page. The Gothic screen measures 48 by 30 inches, and the Mission Style three-panel screen 54 by 31.5 inches. A three-panel screen stands with its side panels angled back, so it spans less than its flat width.

Check the depth of the hearth as well, since the screen needs a footing in front of the opening. The Manchester, Stonewall and Selene screens have adjustable back feet, so each can stand flush against the fireplace face. Screens that open like a door have a page of their own, our screens with doors.

Measuring for a fireplace grate

For a grate, measure the firebox floor rather than the opening. Take the width at the front, the width at the back and the depth from front to back, because many fireboxes narrow toward the back wall.

The inch figure in each of our grate names is the grate's width. Pick one narrower than the back width of your floor, so it sits clear of the side walls and the back wall with room on every side.

The cast iron grate comes in 18, 24, 27 and 30 inches. Our 3/4-inch steel grate runs 21, 24, 30, 33 and 36 inches with five to nine bars. The 1/2-inch steel grate with ember retainer comes in 18, 24, 27 and 30 inches. Every grate from the Pleasant Hearth approach sits on the grates shelf, sorted by width.

Every Pleasant Hearth door and the opening it covers