I surrounded my stove on three sides with concrete sidewalk blocks and piled rocks on top. It seems to work fairly well. I have toyed with the idea of building a brick enclosure which would look a little more professional but I don't look at it much anyway (it's in the basement). The stove sits on a cement floor as well. GD
I seriously thought about doing that. Spent many hours figuring out how to stack up block around and above the stove to add thermal mass.
The girlfriend really disliked the idea. Plus my stove is in my living room above a full basement. I could have put a couple of posts on the basement floor below to support the weight.
Finally, I decided not to do the masonry surround but the idea still is intriguing to me.
