Ripping out or covering slate mantle?

[TBM]

I wish you had a photo. It is hard to visualize and give advice based on your description, but it does sound pretty awful.

[TBM]

If you post the one photo you have we could at least see the stone, right?

[auntie]

Could it be marble?

[auntie]

Is it original to the home? I wonder if it makes sense to remove something that is an original design feature from the era.

[pitterwoo]

with this crazy description I'm going to need to see a closeup, really.

[ktzmoh]

I'm fairly sure you can tile over just about anything. But we just had an ugly fireplace torn out and rebuilt with a brick we liked. It wound up being $1800 for the labor and the materials and was done in 2 days.