Old stove chimney in kitchen?

[musashi79uk]

Hi,
The corner of my kitchen is rounded off for some reason. I've recently had a new boiler fitted and the gas engineer seemed to think that the corner of the kitchen at one time housed a stove. The kitchen has always been built around the rounded corner but we would like to knock it through to square it off.
I've chipped away at some of the plaster to reveal bricks behind it. One of my neighbours' houses doesn't have the rounded corner so it is square.
My other neighbour's house has recently been sold and I saw the pictures online. I've attached a photo of the recently sold house, which is in a very poor state but you can see the corner more clearly on that photo than if I took one of my own house as I have kitchen units blocking most of the view. The sold house has no central heating but as you can see in the photo, a gas fire is mounted in the corner.
How much hassle is it going to be to square the corner up in my kitchen and where do I start?

Thanks

Carl

 

[ree]

What possibly used to be in the corner was a solid fuel fireplace under a washing boiler or tub and a flue at the back leading up to the roof chimney stack. Or the fire was set under a brick stove arrangement as suggested.

FWIW: a smoke test and sweep of the flue are almost always necessary at least.

A pic of your c/breast set-up would help.

I love these old features (there's very few of them left) but its your house and your re-modelling job.

If you square off the kitchen it will involve (at a min.) removing the chimney breast up to the first floor ceiling above. C/breast removal is a dirty dusty job, & depending on the structure of the cottage(?) and the c/breast it could be a little involved - ie using a steel lintel or lintels. Plus the old soot contaminated flue wall might have brickwork that needs replacing. Kitchen ceiling & floor & first floor surfaces would have to be made good.

 

[theprinceofdarkness]

It does look like the flue from Victorian copper. Doe this back on to some other fire breast? or it might have had its own flue, can you see any marks on a outside wall or roof where this might have been?
If you allow 3" of brick for the front diagonal face then the area behind it into the corner of the original "square" brickwork would be very small. This make me think that the original "square" might not be square right into the corner.
I would explore the situation, by knocking a hole in the centre of the panel and having a look see if the hole behind is triangular(good) or square (bad). In either case it can be removed with a narrow chisel and a big hammer.
Depending on your proposed kitchen layout, corner units can be modified to accomadate the brickwork, leaving just the diagonal bit across above the work surface to be tiled. If you are not using corner units here I would remove it.
Frank