Carpentry and Woodworking - Wood fireplace hearth???

We have a fireplace with a raised hearth, gas logs. We are getting ready to remove the existing marble and replace with stone. The hearth's "seating" area is currently made of marble slabs. I would like the new "seating" area, horizontal surface to be wood with rounded edges and corners (we have young children and would like more forgiving materials when heads go crashing).

Suggestions? What type of wood or product to use to basically get a "bench" type surface? Will probably stain to a rich mahogany, maybe somewhat distressed look.

Thanks,

Roger

Lots of choices of wood, but for cost and ease of working with it, I would go with 2X12 pine (#2 or better...no knots) for this.
Hand-select the lumber with a lot of red heart grain. Pine is a softwood, and would be easy to distress with a piece of chain or ball peen hammer.
We used this type of pine (1X4 and 1X6) to trim out around two triple-glass panel Andersen exterior French door sets, stained it with a red mahogany followed by poly, and it looks great.
If your hearth is wider than the 11.5"+/- of a 2X12, you might consider using 2X boards with less width, rip them down smooth, and glue and clamp them together with biscuits or dowels between them to make a solid seat piece.
You can use a jig saw to round the corners, and a router to ease the edges.
Good luck!
Mike