Opening a Fireplace

[welshcottage]

Hi all

first post on here, so think in the right place, I have been involved in a number of restoration projects over the years, and most projects go ok and to a standard I (and the wife of course) is happy with.

We are renovating a welsh cottage at the moment, which we hope to move into in the next 3-4 weeks, but the fireplace has me flummoxed, during the 1960's someone seems to have removed a backboiler (there are some pipes int he wall) and added a concrete fireplace, normally, there is a concrete lintel or an original curved brick lintel but on this occasion I can only find a small piece of metal, now this could be ok but welcome advice. I want to open up the fireplace, for potentially a log burner, but initially a fire and grate, so I can at least do the plastering of the walls.

My question is would it be ok to remove some bricks above the metal lintel and add a new concrete one across the gap, maybe use props , the breast is about 2-3 foot wide in total, and been thre fr 200 years so do not think would just cave in. and I will attach a pic when Ihave figured that out!

All comments appreciated, the fireplace has not been used sincemid 2011, and needs a good sweep![/img]

 

[TerenceQ]

What age is the cottage?

There might be a lot of stone rather than brick in there so to put a lintol in you might end up with a very big hole

 

[big-all]

a log burner needs to comply with building regs have a class 1 liner installed to the top and passed at your expense by building regs or be done by a hetas engineer who will self certify so may be the cheaper option