Hi, I'm in the process of buying a Victorian terraced house and the chimney breast of one of the downstairs rooms sticks out quite a lot into the room so it would make sense to remove it to regain some floor space. There is no fireplace as it was bricked up many years ago (and the surveyor said that if we didn't remove the chimney breast we would have to put some ventilation into the chimney breast).
The wall that the chimney breast is attached to is the outer wall of the house which in many terraced houses would be the neighbour's living room wall. However, the other side of the wall is not immediately our next door neighbour's living room, because there is a shared passageway with an arched roof to our respective back gardens that runs between the two houses at ground level. The wall that divides the two houses at first floor level sits on top of the passageway, presumably over the keystones of the arch. The first floor bedroom still has its chimney breast, but the chimney breast of the first floor doesn't sit directly on top of the chimney breast of the living room chimney breast but must have an S-shaped curve in it somewhere around the level of the ground floor ceiling.
Here are my questions.
1. Is the wall of the living room considered a party wall? I read somewhere that if you want to do work on a party wall you have to serve two months notice to your neighbour before you can start work. If that's the case then it's a non-starter. We haven't yet exchanged contracts with the vendor of our house, and we want to move in a couple of weeks after completion, to give us time to do various jobs on the house first. We want to remove the chimney breast immediately after completion, rather than living in the house for two months before starting work!
2. Will building regs need to be involved, given that above the level of the ceiling of the ground floor there is almost no weight of chimney, other than where it curves around the arch of the passageway to connect to the first floor chimney breast? I presume we'd still need to fit some sort of beam to support the weight of bricks, but there would only be a couple of layers of bricks to support rather than the height of the entire chimney stack.
3. The room has its original coving all the way around the chimney breast. Can this be carefully removed and reused to cover the gap where the chimney once occupied? Otherwise we'd have to remove coving from the whole room and recove as I doubt we'd find an identical match.
4. How long should we factor in for the work to take, including making good the coving and replastering the wall? As said before, we want to move in within a few days of completion.
5. Any suggestion for what to budget for (including skip, replastering etc)? House is in the Midlands.
Thanks!
The wall that the chimney breast is attached to is the outer wall of the house which in many terraced houses would be the neighbour's living room wall. However, the other side of the wall is not immediately our next door neighbour's living room, because there is a shared passageway with an arched roof to our respective back gardens that runs between the two houses at ground level. The wall that divides the two houses at first floor level sits on top of the passageway, presumably over the keystones of the arch. The first floor bedroom still has its chimney breast, but the chimney breast of the first floor doesn't sit directly on top of the chimney breast of the living room chimney breast but must have an S-shaped curve in it somewhere around the level of the ground floor ceiling.
Here are my questions.
1. Is the wall of the living room considered a party wall? I read somewhere that if you want to do work on a party wall you have to serve two months notice to your neighbour before you can start work. If that's the case then it's a non-starter. We haven't yet exchanged contracts with the vendor of our house, and we want to move in a couple of weeks after completion, to give us time to do various jobs on the house first. We want to remove the chimney breast immediately after completion, rather than living in the house for two months before starting work!
2. Will building regs need to be involved, given that above the level of the ceiling of the ground floor there is almost no weight of chimney, other than where it curves around the arch of the passageway to connect to the first floor chimney breast? I presume we'd still need to fit some sort of beam to support the weight of bricks, but there would only be a couple of layers of bricks to support rather than the height of the entire chimney stack.
3. The room has its original coving all the way around the chimney breast. Can this be carefully removed and reused to cover the gap where the chimney once occupied? Otherwise we'd have to remove coving from the whole room and recove as I doubt we'd find an identical match.
4. How long should we factor in for the work to take, including making good the coving and replastering the wall? As said before, we want to move in within a few days of completion.
5. Any suggestion for what to budget for (including skip, replastering etc)? House is in the Midlands.
Thanks!
