Good evening,
I have recently had an old unattractive fireplace ripped out. The house is circa 1900 and underneath I was expecting to find a nice piece of stone work. The reason why I thought this was because the other houses in my row of terraces have nice original stone fireplaces, so I thought it was a fair assumption to make.
After stripping out, to my horror, I found a chimney breast that was half attractive stone work and half s*** red brick, as you can see in the pictures below. I suppose my first question is why is it like this?? I guess at some point part of the original stone was replaced with brick. But why!?? The second more important question is what can I do with this? Will it be possible to get someone to replace the red brick with stone that is similar to the existing stone? And possibly open it up and put a big stone slab lintel in across? Would it cost a fortune to do this? Are there any other options?
After seeing the nice stonework at the top I'm reticent to just board over it all. Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Cheers.
I have recently had an old unattractive fireplace ripped out. The house is circa 1900 and underneath I was expecting to find a nice piece of stone work. The reason why I thought this was because the other houses in my row of terraces have nice original stone fireplaces, so I thought it was a fair assumption to make.
After stripping out, to my horror, I found a chimney breast that was half attractive stone work and half s*** red brick, as you can see in the pictures below. I suppose my first question is why is it like this?? I guess at some point part of the original stone was replaced with brick. But why!?? The second more important question is what can I do with this? Will it be possible to get someone to replace the red brick with stone that is similar to the existing stone? And possibly open it up and put a big stone slab lintel in across? Would it cost a fortune to do this? Are there any other options?
After seeing the nice stonework at the top I'm reticent to just board over it all. Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Cheers.
