Fireplace Lintel

Hi Guys,
First post on here, need a bit of advice with my fireplace. I've taken out the gas fire since it's taking up valuable space on a wall where I want to put a flatscreen tele. I want to put all the hifi seperates inside the fireplace. The opening isn't quite big enough at the moment, but it's pretty obvious where new bricks have been added to make the opening for the gas fire, it must have been much bigger for the coal fire.

I want to take all the newer bricks out, but it looks as though the lintel isn't sitting on much of the original brickwork, only by about an inch or so each side....

I really don't want it all to collapse!

Thanks, Oliver

There may have been an original arch in there before which was serving as a lintel then a new one put it. You may need to retrofit a new longer lintel in if you widening the opening. Pretty straight forward job.

Presumably you don't need the full opening width of the lintel and it looks like it extends an inch or so over the old bricks so you could take out the top (new) bricks up to the lintel, jam in a couple of pieces of 4X2 from the floor up to support the lintel, take the rest of the bricks out and just brick up either side with blocks or bricks on edge to support lintel.

Thanks guys, turned out there was no lintel where it looks like there is one, it was just a load of mortar, so i've put a concrete lintel in and knocked out the bricks. All looks good