Anyone in construction? Remodeling fireplace

[tashier]

Anyone that can help me with this question?

I have a room with a whole wall covered in brick with a small fireplace in the bottom left corner. We never use it and it has a hearth running the full length of the bottom of the wall. It's a considerable waste of valuable space in this room. My plan is to demo this entire wall & hearth, somehow seal off the fireplace and frame a wall over it. I am assuming that this wall is just decorative brick covering up a cinderblock firebox and chimney. I am by no means an expert and have a few questions.

1. Can I frame a wall up against the cinderblocks?
2. How do I seal up the fireplace?
3. What's the best way to dismante this brick wall?

[tashier]

If you look at my avatar pic you can just see the step of the hearth in the left side of the pic. It runs the full length of the wall.

[Fly Guy]

I didnt like the brick on my fireplace and i covered it with tile......then i decided i didnt want to split or haul wood anymore so i removed the wood stove and put a 90 gallon reef there........

It looks GREAT

[tashier]

Haha, I've seen pics of your tank and was wondering what that tile was around. NOW I KNOW! This would be a perfect wall for a built in tank. The wall is probably ~3' thick and has the family room/living rooms on either side of it. If I demo'd out the whole fireplace I could put a NICE tank in the wall viewable from either side. I'd just need maybe $10-15k for that and we'd be set.

[Twitterbait]

When you're sure that the brick is deco then yes, tear it out and just do a 2 x 4 framed wall in there and go. you can seal the fireplace but if you do you should seal the chimney as well or you will have visitors. you could look at installing a stove and cutting the hearth down to just in front of the existing firebox.

[tims]

yup you acan seal it off.
a few questions first..
1. ya plan on living there a long time? if you sell will you want to show the fire place?
2. it was wood onlyright ? no gas lines? just making sure

to fully cap off the fire place you should buy a expandable cap and dot he top of the chimmey.I would do a cleaning of it first. then seal the lower section. usally if you capp the top you can just close the damper.
if you plan on walling it in. you can drive nails ( made for it) in to the block.
i woudl insulate it pretty good.
not sure how old the house is, but the slate in front of the fireplace is very heavy, if you remove it becareful. there should be extra supports directly under the floor in the basement for it. this will be good for a tank to sit on too....
HTH

[Scuba_Dave]

Just don't take the whol ething out unless you are removing the chimney too. That cinder block is holding everything up.
I like having the ability to have a fire, so I would keep it open & just get rid of the huge wall.

Besides, how will Santa get in?

[tashier]

Santa will still have 2 other fireplaces to get his fat butt down!!

Picture this:

2 rooms, a family room and living room. The wall between those two rooms is probably 3' thick. Both rooms have a fireplace in them, in the wall they are side by side but just facing opposite directions. Mostly likely they are constructed of cinder block. Layered over the cinder block on both sides (both rooms) is a full wall of brick. In one room (maybe both eventually) we want to remove this layer of brick, keeping the cinder block, and frame a wall rather than brick. The fireplaces have rarely, if ever, been used and probably wouldn't need to be cleaned. The house was built in 1979. There is no gas plumbed at all. The are real, woodburning, fireplaces. They are not very big luckily other than the fact there are 3 of them. We have no basement, only a crawlspace.

[Scuba_Dave]

That's a lot of brick!!

I would do as you want then. Just as you remove make sure the cinder block construction is sound. Since you will have an intact wall on the other side I do not think that will be a problem. If you see any loose mortar then I would patch it up

As far as building a 2x4 wall it depends upon if you need it
A 2x3 wall will not save much on space, but would save some
Electric boxes will still fit in a 2x3 wall
Some would use only strapping to attach to the cement & use "pancake" boxes for electric. But these are a royal PIA for anything but a single 14-2 wire

[AdamG]

can you post pics of the wall? what the ceiling looks like by the wall and underneath... maybe from th ebasement looking up?

[Kathi]

Make sure you don't have any "tenants" first. For a couple of days watch your chimmneys at dusk. If you see any bats deal with them first. Any type of construction could cause them to re-locate into the house. Just an FYI, as rabies shot are not fun.

[tashier]

Here's pics of the wall.

[tashier]

Originally Posted by Kathi

Make sure you don't have any "tenants" first. For a couple of days watch your chimmneys at dusk. If you see any bats deal with them first. Any type of construction could cause them to re-locate into the house. Just an FYI, as rabies shot are not fun.

We've had a lot of problems with birds. Birds stuck in the fireplace and building nests on the dampers. They've come down the chimney into the house a couple times.

[AdamG]

so do you want to frame against the wall or take it down???

[tashier]

We plan on taking that whole thing down. A couple of reasons, more room, and also if you look at the ceiling there are beams going across. If we were to wall over the brick we'd be covering up that last beam. The room would look strange with beams evenly space across the ceiling and then missing one on the end. IMO.