I purchased a house that had a large brick-faced faceplace in the family room, along with a raised brick floor hearth. The fireplace itself was originally woodburning, but the original owner ran a gas line and now it has gas fired logs in there.

We didn't like the brick face/floor hearth, so we had it all demo'ed. The below picture is what we have now.

Notice in the bottom right of the picture is the clay tile-encased furnace flue coming up from the basement (previously it was hidden in the floor hearth structure). It diagonally comes up through the floor and into the fireplace wall.

In order to hide it, I think we need to use a fireplace surround (like a white column) to encase it, but that looks like it will be very close to the firebox itself. Does that require me to convert to a zero-clearance gas insert?

Any other thoughts/ideas are helpful here, since we're sort of stuck now.

Here is a link that might be useful: Demo'ed fireplace