time to start the building work and knock back the plaster and inspect the condition of the wall where the log burner will be.
once the plaster had been removed I discovered to my disappointment that the old brick arched/soldier lintel had been removed when the fire place was previously bricked up.
this meant a reinforced concrete lintel would be required
adding additional support to the brick work above by attaching a steal beam drilled into the brick work I was able to remove the row of bricks and add the lintel
since then I have opened up the fire place and as I chipped away the copious amount of bricks and shovelled away the endless amounts off back fill I have finally revealed quite a substantial fire place opening
the hearth construction was pretty simply with the forward thought of how to leave a neat finish when tie-ing in the new wooden floor with the hearth I decided to build the base of the hearth up by creating a platform for my hearth stone to sit on
this was done my making some wood shuttering and pouring some flooring compound to raise the level of the base
(a tip is to look for the trolley with the damaged bags on you can usually pick up the overly priced floor compound for half price)
with regard to the opening surround I decided to weld two lengths of L section iron back to back this would allow me to leave the internal area of the fireplace brick faced whilst also allowing me to have a solid edge to plaster against when I plaster the external wall of the chimney breast
Looks like a good project, I'm about to embark on a similar one myself, swapping a gas fireplace for a stove. I've also got to widen the opening so I'm just looking at how people have installed new lintels
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