Open up sesame!
Here's something I made earlier...
With the visit of a chimney sweep finally having been arranged, I thought I'd better open up the thing, so the good man can do his sweeping work.
We'd been putting this off, for some reason or other.
I guess mainly (and this being a very good reason) that in the middle of winter, with another cold snap just around the corner, it is not a very good idea to pierce an elephant-sized hole into your dining room, hence building a first class escape route for any heat that's been expensively created by our good little gas boiler...
Oh, what the heck! Ignoring all reasoning (as I my other half would accuse me of doing quite regularly), I had knocked through last week, just to have a better idea of what would come towards us - dead pigeons, mummified cats, a hidden treasure maybe?
After taking a couple of bricks out, I could see that, basically, this chimney breast was full of s**t, so any further works would include clearing the dining room, sealing the doorways and covering furniture.
So yesterday, on a lovely peaceful and quiet Sunday afternoon, we decided to have a smashing time of it...
This picture below shows the position of a 'faux' lintel: a long piece of slate that had been inserted at some point. As it was resting on its own brick pillars, which we removed, it wasn't sitting on anything any more and it had to go. (We were trying to get the largest possible opening without going beyond the original dimensions.)
The OH kept tapping away, ready to jump out of the danger zone, should the whole thing collapse...
Using a torch, we were able to see that the original iron lintel was still in place, so there was nothing stopping us from taking everything else out now.
Hey presto! Here's a lovely, wide, shapely fireplace opening, which will in the future hopefully take a cutesy little wood / multi-fuel stove. Charnwood, Clearview, Stovax, Hunter... we're coming.
With the visit of a chimney sweep finally having been arranged, I thought I'd better open up the thing, so the good man can do his sweeping work.
We'd been putting this off, for some reason or other.
I guess mainly (and this being a very good reason) that in the middle of winter, with another cold snap just around the corner, it is not a very good idea to pierce an elephant-sized hole into your dining room, hence building a first class escape route for any heat that's been expensively created by our good little gas boiler...
Oh, what the heck! Ignoring all reasoning (as I my other half would accuse me of doing quite regularly), I had knocked through last week, just to have a better idea of what would come towards us - dead pigeons, mummified cats, a hidden treasure maybe?
After taking a couple of bricks out, I could see that, basically, this chimney breast was full of s**t, so any further works would include clearing the dining room, sealing the doorways and covering furniture.
So yesterday, on a lovely peaceful and quiet Sunday afternoon, we decided to have a smashing time of it...
This picture below shows the position of a 'faux' lintel: a long piece of slate that had been inserted at some point. As it was resting on its own brick pillars, which we removed, it wasn't sitting on anything any more and it had to go. (We were trying to get the largest possible opening without going beyond the original dimensions.)
The OH kept tapping away, ready to jump out of the danger zone, should the whole thing collapse...
Using a torch, we were able to see that the original iron lintel was still in place, so there was nothing stopping us from taking everything else out now.
Hey presto! Here's a lovely, wide, shapely fireplace opening, which will in the future hopefully take a cutesy little wood / multi-fuel stove. Charnwood, Clearview, Stovax, Hunter... we're coming.
