Chimney Breast Removal

[RainCloud]

How much does it cost and how difficult is it please? Thinking of having it done in the dining room, back bedroom when I redecorate.

It's an old mid terrace, if that makes a difference. 110 years old.

Just on the ground floor or also on the upper floors? Are you also removing the chimney stack above roof level?

Ideally both the dining room on the ground floor and the 2nd bedroom on the upper floor.

It's blocked up and unused.

Hadn't thought about the stack on the roof!

Not 100% sure but if you remove both chimney breasts you will certainly have to put support rsj/lintels in where you remove the chimney breasts and probably have to get buildings regs sign off as you are altering the structural integrity of the building. Hence it can be as easy to remove the stack - which by default is useless anyway if you remove the chimney breasts as that limits what you have to do in the other rooms.

It can be quite a big job and very messy

Just had this done in our mid terrace, upstairs room only.

Had to get a structural survey first of all - £850.

Then we had 2 options.
1st option was to have an equal number of bricks to the height of the chimney stack left in place to balance the weight of the chimney. For our room it would have meant only the bottom half of the chimney would be removed, so hardly worth it.

2nd option which we went for, was to have a steel beam put in across the ceiling. It does create a “step” at top of ceiling as the beam didn’t all fit on our loft (as we’ve had loft conversation above). It actually look ok though.
all in £6200 (inc VAT) (but that included replastering the whole room, ripping up existing laminate floor and relaying a new one, moving the radiator and redecorating.

To do both chimney stacks a different builder quoted us £9k not including VAT.

I mean to do both upstairs and downstairs room a builder quoted £9k.

We didn’t have the chimney on the roof removed as that would have meant dealing with our neighbour.

You may need a party wall agreement if you're not detached.

Ours was £1500 but during a full remodel so may have made it cheaper and we had structural engineer for that anyway.

You will need building regs to sign off as it's a structural change. Be sure to get this as you will need the certificate when you sell.

Probably a dumb question but why would you want to remove the chimney breast?

I often wonder that. It’s frequently not worth it. Make a feature of the chimney. All weight of a remaining chimney has to be diverted into the ground via foundations. You cannot leave a chimney suspended in mid air. Beams deflect the weight into load bearing walls snd then down to the foundations. It’s messy and expensive snd if the chimney is on a shared wall you do need a party wall agreement.

To create more space, particularly in the bedroom.

Thanks everyone.

We were moving our stairs and the new walkway was where the chimney was, it also created more space and we knew we'd never use it for a fire as bad for the environment. All in all, lots of reasons!

Lots of people prefer features over a bit of space gained. The cost now is huge. It tends to rob period houses of their features too.