Chimney breast removal for storage reasons

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OK - so just a quick bit of background to my longish dilemma/vent. Family of 4, 2 DS age 5 and nearly 2. We live in a victorian-style 3 bed semi. All three bedrooms are decent double bed sizes, and in fact we have a small mini office attached to the master bedroom. We bought because of the lovely tall ceilings and location. It has been abused by previous owners with successive poor quality DIY.

I feel like I'm a bit stuck on how to set up the home for success. Storage is a big issue and we've sort of tinkered with it around the edges, buying multiple cupboards, book cases, chests of drawers etc. But it doesn't all hang together properly, in part because we have chimney breasts and radiators all in the wrong places.

Bedroom 1 - bed is up against chimney breast - wasted space, no room to put bed side tables off the shelf, would need to be bespoke. Other wall has radiator. Bed is massive superking so also an absolute pain to move, but we could use the storage opportunity underneath better.

Bedroom 2 - has double bed tucked in corner, again annoying chimney breast meaning no room for a full end to end wardrobe. None of the furniture was actually bought for the room, including the WFH office set up I have. Want DS5 to have this room but need to find a new home for its current contents such as adults coats, bedding, paperwork, printer etc.

Bedroom 3 - Kids share, cot bed, single (extendable) bed, 2 chest of drawers, a wardrobe, chimney breast (which the cot bed is up against) and then another pointless cupboard. Once DS5 moves, the cot bed goes and some of the toys downstairs can come back up.

So, in my view the most logical option is to take out all the chimney breasts upstairs. This would cost around 35k I reckon as we need multiple steels per room. Plus probably more for renovation etc.

Does that make sense?

I'd leave the downstairs chimney breasts in the living and dining rooms, but ultimately remove the one in the kitchen.

Just interested in hearing from others with similar set up how they solved their storage issues with this kind of age group?

And this is before I even talk about the kitchen/utility/conservatory space.

Not at all, and as I've said up thread we have built in storage downstairs that we put in so I'm familiar with doing it.

Our Victorian alcoves just don’t have the depth to make this work.

Because if the alternative is moving house, it might mean a huge increase in mortgage (add an extra thousand pounds a month to your mortgage) and attract a huge amount of stamp duty (I think OP mentioned about £65k).

So - that’s why. Make your current house more liveable.

It is amazing how much more available space there is for furniture when the radiators go.

Our wardrobes stick out but it’s fine. I think it’s more common than not that they do.

It’s easy to unblock a fireplace, l also think it will devalue the house.

It makes me so sad when I see chimney breasts ripped out, I wouldn’t buy it.

Not rtft so apols if repeating. Removing breasts will cause structural issues no matter what anyone tells you. These houses were just not designed to do without them. Removing stacks too would help with the weight but not resolve wall issues. Next door (if semi or terrace) is affected too. Look at opening the chimney fronts with goalpost steels. Keep the sides, creating cupboards or alcoves. Move rads, replace with underfloor or vented heat, you can even put rads on the ceiling (but don't).

We’ve just taken out a huge and I mean huge chimney for exactly the same reason!
Go for it. BUT. The dust. You need to move out basically for a week and employ a small army to clean up!!!

Smallish Victorian terrace in London here - we took out our chimney breasts right the way to roof level last year as part of a loft conversion and major renovation and it’s made the space throughout the house so much more usable. We used a specialist chimney breast removal company and it cost about £10k including steels. We already had PWAs and had moved out due to all the other work we were doing but it’s been transformative. The house had already lost all its other Victorian features long before we moved in so it wasn’t a hard decision in terms of retaining period features.

Absolutely, we have alcoves in most rooms but no original fireplaces. We have linen press, pantry, scullery, dining rm cupboards, architraves etc. but so much else missing. Our street has different things missing in different cottages. In ours the hints of the pre Victorian house are there but literally sometimes just a different skirting in a cupboard or the hint of where the newer staircase meets the older one visible from the understairs cave 🤣

No doubt we contributed to amendments with our need for 21st century living despite attempts to be respectful

Also, I don't want a box. I remember the trend for taking out bay windows way back in the 70s. Some said they made houses cold. I love ours, even more since we ditched the curtains and installed Roman blinds. True, they are a bit modern, but we get to see the sill and the wall below. It also looks amazing with a Christmas tree

OK, interested in thoughts
red - beds
green - cupboards/wardrobes
blue - radiators
teal - office set ups
purple - chest of drawers of various heights

Room w/ Bay window is #1, the one with two beds at the back is #3...

Couple of things:
we can't work in the same space
we can't make desks smaller - so tucking into alcove won't work
the cupboard in kids bedroom on left hand side can't be touched unless we do full renovation - built in and useless - currently only half usable (battle for another day)

I've ordered some additional under the bed storage to go under the super king. The double bed in the second already has inbuilt storage underneath. Cot bed has some storage, single doesn't but I've also ordered something for that.

Where are you all putting laundry baskets, coats, shoes, linen & towels?
The other thing is we could look at upgrading under the stairs....

I'm now thinking, I move the office set up with bookcase in second bedroom into the third, basically swap out for the cot bed and move the free-standing wardrobe in the third bedroom into the second...it may well fit in the alcove.

I've posted floorplan. I'm fully for the idea of bespoke work - just want to maximise and organize space, hence why I am particularly interested in similar experiences.

For a while OP I thought that was your actual colour scheme for the house 🤨

definitely can do that - I'm just not convinced it will give me enough of what I need...

that being said, there are a few opportunities to enhance and maybe that will alleviate the issue. Just feel like I've been nibbling away at this problem bit by bit with no clear vision as to what the finished project should look like.

Nothing I'm storing is valuable, but it all needs a suitable home and I want to feel calm when I go in....right now I do not.

thanks @MidnightPatrol , @babyproblems , @BrickBiscuit and @Buildaaargh for sharing your positive experiences/considerations with the end result, really helpful!

We filled in a couple of our alcoves and had lift up shelves just a little higher than the headboard of the bed.

We used to chuck sleeping bags, pillows etc in in blue ikea bags so they can be pulled up. Then bookcases or hanging space above.

That way, beds can be against the alcoves and across the chimney breast.

Honestly I cannot emphasise enough THE DUST. You could see dust from 100m away easily. It was like a bomb had gone off all over our house inside and outside. It was all over our cars and our neighbours cars which were parked outside!!! And we went away during the work. The dust was by far the worst aspect of the entire thing. We didn’t have structural issues to contend with as our chimney had been added at a later date in a stone / timber house. So we didn’t have to touch the beams etc. Good luck x

DH removes chimney stacks as a matter of course on house conversions - most of his work is Putney/Fulham?Chelsea area

Its not cheap

Its filthy ( if you are living there )

But its actually not a long process - did one a month ago - two storeys - 4 days

And you do recover a lot of floor space

Radiators on walls are also a waste of space imho , underfloor heating and heated skirting boards would be where I go next , but I make do with narrow up rights on wasted wall space

It does look messy on the floor plan @Resetneeded and I do think removing the chimney breaststroke, at least a few, would give you more usable space.

We lived in our house during the removal and yes, the dust was awful but it was before dc so manageable. I'd take anything you cannot scrub clean, like books, off the site.

With Victorian houses, you really need to uyili6the vertical space, which is why custom-built furniture comes in handy.

We built a very small walk-in wardrobe and our laundry basket is there. I also put stuff directly in the machine and then just turn it on when full so it's my second laundry basket.

We built a cupboard under our stairs with a coat rail, few shoe shelves and storage boxes for gloves, hats etc. He lowest area of the cupboard stores our hoover, some buckets and tools, out of season clothes and backpacks.

😆@DrPrunesqualer we are definitely fans of the more muted colour schemes across the home

@Twoshoesnewshoes - that could work in the first bedroom, and then shelving above - would almost hide the visual problem of having unused empty space, thank you.

@babyproblems duly noted - v v large bottle of champagne for neighbours if we go ahead. 😄

@suki1964 - thanks for the input - more I think about it we'd effectively be packing up the entire upstairs from the sounds of it which means doing everything really to take advantage & make it worth it.

@Pigtailsandall - yes I think you're right, there's a fair bit of unused vertical space across all the rooms, we definitely aren't making the best use of that particularly in the 3rd bedroom, but we spend so much time on the floor that it has never occurred to me to steal a bit of their wall space to store things.

@BrickBiscuit I'm considering goal post steel approach for the annoying kitchen one downstairs but that anyway is a completely separate problem with its own issues (perma condensation in one corner - not related to the dishwasher).

We have almost exactly this set up in our office/bedroom and it does mean we use vertical height to it's max. The shelves have books and the cupboards have IT stuff, our paperwork, photo albums etc on one side, and other side has memory boxes, dc games and craft stuff, gift wrap etc that sort of stuff. They are pretty deep

That’s lovely

I have nothing useful to add to this but my brain read the title as Christmas Breast Removal for Storage and was intrigued

I think the problem is your radiators not your chimney breasts. Our bedrooms are set up like this…

Blue = chest of drawers
Purple = radiator
Green = bed

Built in wardrobe where indicated, its floor to ceiling so lots of storage (including two large drawers). In both bedrooms we’ve had the wardrobe put in the alcove furthest from the window.

We also have a small cloak cupboard downstairs and utilise the under stair storage for bags, coats, etc. We have a slim low cupboard for shoes in the hall (which doubles as a bench).