Fireplace help

[gillygeey]

Our house just has bricked holes where the fireplaces used to be. I want to put a surround & a stove in the living room but the hole is too small, how do I make it wider? All the others are much wider annoyingly.

Is it a brick wall or plasterboard? How deep is the chimney breast?

You would need a general builder to knock out the space but there still might not be enough depth for a woodburner. My fireplace recess wouldn’t be deep enough.
The chimney would need to be swept and lined too.

@BorgQueen thank you for responding. It's brick & some other exact same houses on the road have a stove in. I may not get a wood burner though. But I need to find a builder to knock out the bricks, do you have any idea of cost?

Most Tradesmen tend to charge £50-£75 an hour.
Does it just need a basic hole knocking through? A handyman type person might be cheaper.

Have you got a hearth stone or tiles where the original fireplace was?
You may be able to pick up a nice surround and hearth on FB marketplace, my DD has just sold the one they ripped out on there.

When I had my stove put in, the fitter widened the opening and added a new lintel, repointed the bricks inside and re plastered the walls around the fireplace. Id guess a cost of maybe £1k depending on where you live and depending on the state of the current fireplace.

Do you have a local fireplace place? I have a local company I used to do all of them in my last house and he sorted it all - he removed any old fireplaces, created the gap and pointed brickwork etc. Your best bet is to speak to a specialist company as they’ll deal with this all the time

Can you post some pictures? If you can see where the lintel is then you can sometimes knock it out yourself.