Putting fireplaces back in when been bricked up.

[Thandeka]

Looking at buying a house where all the fireplaces have been bricked up. Don't care about upstairs fireplaces but we were thinking we would like at least one if not two fireplaces downstairs (is a through lounge with partition doors).

Are we completely insane to even consider this? The house is double glazed with great central heating so its not like we need a fire and being in London I doubt we would be out collecting kindling on our sunday walks- so probably doesn't need to be a working fireplace (or maybe a nice victorian gas fire or are they hideous really?) is restoring a fireplace to be a non working focal point a complete waste of time? The room seems a bit souless without that but maybe thats just because it hasnt got our funky furniture in it yet!

I think reception rooms without a fire look a bit 'wrong' somehow.We have an open fire and central heating,but live in the sticks and have access to lots of free wood.

Is the house in a smokeless zone?I'm not sure about what you can and can't burn in built up areas.

If it helps,our old fire was literally a hole in the wall.I had a repro cast iron fireplace and hearth fitted,with a wooden mantel.It cost about £2.5k but there isn't a day that passes when I don't look at it and think how much I love it.

We don't even have a hole in the wall- would be an element of a demolition job- scary!

So probably budget at least £3k. Hmmmmm.

Good point on smokeless zone- will check.

We knocked through the brieze block in our last house and put in fireplaces - best thing we did re feel (and value!). After we had our chimney checked and cleaned, we also used it for the occasional wood fire. We also live in London and our neighbours use their open fireplace regularly. They burn wood rather than smokeless coal.

They've probably been bricked up with one skin of bricks and the hole can easily be reopened (messy but easy) - may even be plasterboard with skim. You can spend a fortune on cast iron fireplaces but I got all mine (cast iron, Edwardian, eight in total) on ebay and two of them cost 99p for the pair. Don't be put off by a bit of rust or paint, they can easily be grit-blasted for a few quid and then polished up with blacking. The expensive bit for us was getting the slate slip hearths done as the original tiled hearths had been torn up but even then, it was only a few hundred each - just the fact that there was eight of them that made it expensive...