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Hey folks,
I am not sure if this is cost effective to be done but here is what I am thinking of doing.
Between my kitchen and family room I have a 3' thick brick wall which encloses a fire place which hasn't been used in 20 years. The previous owners didn't you use it. I have considered removing it because really eats up a lot of territory and the brick runs the entire wall. Fireplaces are not energy efficient to say the least. What are your experiences in removing it????
Bryan
Is it a prefab with a metal chimney and just decorative brick or is it solid masonry from the foundation to the roof?
A prefab with decorative brick shouldn't be too hard to demo, but a solid masonry structure could be a nightmare waiting to happen.
Our's hadn't been getting used for about the last 15 years or so. Too much cleanup mess inside and time cutting wood outside. But it got changed over to a gas fireplace insert and gets used to heat that room rather than the separate furnace for that addition. Works great. One other option if tearing it out is too much headache.
Brian, Kyle asks a good question...something like that which is built in can be a major project to remove, both for the masonry and for the structural mending that will need to be done to the home. It very well may not be a DIY job, depending on the situation.
But I do feel for you. Our kitchen has a large, "walk in" fireplace feature. Except it only goes to the ceiling. I called it the "fabulous fake fireplace" when I was doing my kitchen renovation back in 2003. But it's also too massive to remove. So it lives on with cabinetry, the microwave, the toaster oven and the coffee mill inside the opening. I would have loved to that the space back for more design flexibility, but it was not to be. This is a round-about way of suggesting that what Doug talks about is a worthy option to explore. You may very well need a SS liner to put in a gas unit, but it would at least make the fireplace useful and enjoyable.
The fireplace is definitely brick and mortar. There is a concrete block pier under the fireplace in the crawl space. The original design had a grill on the other side of the wall. The grill was taken and a counter top was put over top of the brick. That was one of my first projects, removed the brick evened up the floor with some concrete and put in a pantry, my fridge and a few more cabinets. One of the bigger problems related to the fire place is this one has several leaks roof side. I can see where it has in the past and even within the past year leaked around the fire place. I am a DIY'er I was wondering what the unexpected issues might be if I go down this road. I am sure it would need to be done around the time I am re-roofing the house since I would need to patch the punch through. Unfortunately in this plat all we have is propane, haven't run natural gas to us yet.
Bryan, I suspect you can get an insert that works with Propane if need be. If you do choose to remove the whole schmegeggi, than just before re-roof time is the way to go, IMHO. But you still may need to get professional help with disassembling the fireplace from the top down to insure that no inadvertent damage occurs during the process. It's also hard, heavy work which in itself isn't a problem, but something to consider, nonetheless.
My parent's chimney is shot due to a chimmney fire. A couple years ago I installed a vent-free fireplace unit in it. Theirs went all the way to the basement with an ash cleanout down there so we punched through the wall down there to run the gas line and came out the ash door. I made a nice stained poplar trim ring to go around it. They love it and use it to keep that room comfortable while keeping the rest of the house a little cooler.
Two years earlier I built a mantle and installed the exact same unit in our house. We have propane and I was able to buy a propane unit at Lowes.