I built a box to hold firewood next to the fireplace, so it will get abuse. It's made out of plywood and not overly fancy, but I don't know much about finishes yet and I'm not sure what is something that would work well for an application like this.
For your amusement I am attaching a photo -- I did this as one of my projects this semester in community college, so I did a design, made a 3d printed model, then a wood model (for the general joinery idea) and the real thing -- which I still need to make feet for, but that's another problem for another day! I know, it's funny to do that much work for something I put together much faster than anything else I did in class!
firebox.JPG