Fireplace revamp

[foxylad]

Hi,

We have just bought our first house. It is a 2 bed semi built in 1904. The first room we are tackling is the master bedroom.

I have no previous experience of removing or fitting fireplaces. I have taken the original cast iron fireplace out (was not very nice) and this is what we are now left with:

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We have decided that we want to end up with something like this:

View media item 14076
My question is...

As this is a first floor fireplace, and there is an open fire also in the living room below, can I just smash out what appears to be the infill in the back of the opening to just be left with a hole or will I break through into the flue coming up from the fire below? Where does the flue from the fire below run? Behind it? Beside it?

If I am able to smash the infill out, I will then just build a new brick platform (with some nicer bricks) for the fire basket to stand on, and the have the whole thing plastered.

Cheers

 

[cmother1]

The downstairs flue will run to the side of the upstairs fireplace. You often find the brickwork is wider on one side of the upstairs opening indicating that's where the flue is. The crap in the grate is just to fill up the void behind the old fireback. Usually comes out very easily.

 

[foxylad]

Ah right, yea they were my thoughts, the opening is slightly to the left of the chimney breast.

How would you go about blocking up the flue above? We dont ever invisage this fireplace being used, just a decorative feature. I am planing to have the whole thing plastered, even the back, sides & base of the opening, and painting it the same off-white as the room. So I dont really want black crap falling down from the flue.

 

[cmother1]

This is what I did at my last place. You need to ventilate the flue even if it's not used. You can either stick a vent on the chimney breast (ugly) or try what's shown below.

You need to fix some battens in the fireplace above the opening to attach plasterboard to. You might only be able to do this on the sides because of restricted drilling space. If so reinforce the plasterboard along its long edges by glueing or screwing light battens to it. Make up the following contraption (seen from above)

The dotted line is the hole in the plasterboard which is covered by a vent from below.. It will work even better if you edge the hole on the top side with light timber (which will give you a lip and something solid to screw the vent to)