Fire place help - how do we fix this

[Renonewb1e]

Removed some not so lovely wood paneling off the wall, which has left us with an old fire place.
If we want something like in the photo attached do we just remove the whole fire unit and plaster etc?
will insert a photo of what we have currently and what we want…

Is this something we can try to do ourselves, or should we just be getting a professional?

If you want a wood burning stove fitted you will need a professional. They should also as part of the work be able to remove the old stuff/ open up more as needed and re-plaster. That’s what we had done ☺️

edited to say that of course you could do some of the work yourself if you didn’t want a stove or use the fire but if you’re going to have something like that installed it will need to be done by a pro and might as well get them to do the whole lot

@Wigtopia thank you! I didn’t consider that the person fitting the fire could also do the rest of it.

Do you mind me how much it cost to get them to do the whole thing?

I think it cost somewhere between £3,000 and £3,500 about 5ish years ago. So not a small amount of money but it did includeThis include:

• opening up the chimney area
• putting some sort of spray/solution on the brickwork once it was opened up to protect and seal it as it was fairly old brickwork
• lining the chimney breast with some sort of insulation gubbins
• supplying and fitting the wood burning stove
• supplying and fitting a slate hearth, surround and mantle
• supplying and fitting cowels to go on top of the chimney to stop birds and small animals falling in
• Then re plastering the chimney breast to make it tidy again
• swept the chimney to clear it all before we first used it
• supplied a fire safety certificate

maybe try a few chimney sweeping companies to see if they offer the full services as above because some of it is quite specialist so you’d want someone “in the field” as it were. If it were me I’d rather that and ensure I have a proper fire safety certificate rather than trying to get an odd jobs or a handy man in. But then again I guess it depends if you will be using the fire or just opening it up for aesthetic ☺️

good luck!