Anyone had a chimney breast removed?

[SinkGirl]

Considering this in our twins bedroom as we desperately need the space.

At present we have two chimneys - one in our lounge / our bedroom is set up for an open fire. The one in the dining room / boy’s bedroom is set up for wood burned downstairs although we don’t currently have one in place. The chimneys are shared with the adjacent house so we can’t take the chimney down - can you even remove a chimney breast without removing the chimney or is that a structural issue? (Apologies if this is a stupid question, I have no idea!)

I don’t care that we wouldn’t be able to have a wood burner downstairs, but would doing any of this work affect resale value? Does having the ability to put a wood burner straight in improve saleability? The house has a lot of original features so I’m reluctant to take out a fire place but we have limited options.

Done it several times. Get a structural engineer, think you also need building permit. Get this or you'll also have trouble selling. You might need a party wall agreement too. Tedious & costly. It also makes a huge mess. The actual doing is the easy part.

You can remove the chimney breast without removing the chimney. It needs a steel or gallows brackets inserting at either first floor level (if you are keeping the breast on the first floor, or at ceiling height of the first floor (if you are taking the breast out at ground and first).

The steel/brackets will support the chimney that is left behind. The only thing to be careful is if the neighbours have already removed their breast - if they have, and used gallows brackets, the structural engineer will need to be aware of this - gallows brackets cannot be used on both sides, so if they have you will have to have a full width steel instead. Personally I hate gallows brackets and would always design a steel, but it's just something to be aware off if it's suggested to use that method.

Thank you this is really helpful :) Will take some advice on it.

You don't have to have a structural engineer, but you'll probably want to use one as it's a shared wall. You'll need building control to sign off the work. Ours was a non-adjoining wall, we only had the chimney breast removed on the first floor (we kept it on the ground floor and retained the stack, supported by gallows brackets). Building control sent someone to check the brackets and sign off the work before our builder 'made good'.

You'll need a party wall agreement if it is an adjoining wall; there are free template letter online, your neighbours may be happy to just sign but will likely ask you to use a party wall surveyor in case of any damage (probably the best thing anyway for neighbourly relations etc).