how much to change fireplaces, roughly?

[hophophippidtyhop]

We've just had our offer accepted on a house, and it has a real fireplace in it. I'm not that keen on the brick surround and contemplating whether or not to allow some money within the new mortgage to change it for something else.I'm not sure what yet, maybe something like a cast iron fireplace but cheaper, or something a bit more modern. What I'm wondering is except the cost of the actual fireplace bit( I think it will be from about £400 upwards depending on style), does anyone have a very rough idea how much I might be charged for getting rid of the bricks and sticking the new fireplace in?

We put in a beautiful stone fireplace (£1.5k)when we moved in (instead of a hideous 80s one). We ripped of the bricks ourselves (DH with mallett) and then he was able to plaster sufficiently because the new fireplace hid the damage. Cost - zero other than the skips which we paid £100 for.

So I guess it depends whether you choose something that will more or less hide the bit you are ripping off.

Ours cost £400 for removal of old fireplace and fitting the new one by a professional fireplace fitter (which I would recommend over a general builder)

We're in London so may be cheaper outside.

We paid about £150 for putting a new coal fire in about 8 years ago. There was no fire to remove as it was just a hole in the wall which the new fireplace covered.

we removed the old one and paid £250 install plus £250 for the fireplace.

worth every penny to get rid of the vile seventies fan-heater thing...

That's not as bad as I thought. The brick one is livable, but thought it would be nice to have something I liked more. Planning on staying a while, so it would be worth it.

We had a nasty old gas fire with brick surround knocked out and a new wooden surround and flame effect gas one put in and it cost about £1600+... Perhaps we were ripped off...

We just ripped out our old fire surround with the idea of replacing it with a new reasonably priced one. What we didn't realise is that it didn't comply with building regs (didn't need it 10 years ago when it was put in). We would now have to remove the lintel above and block work around to be able to comply with building regs. We have decided to go for a inset log burning stove which will look lovely but cost a lot more than I had intended.

All fires now have to be intalled by a Hetas registered installer, or you can apply and pay for building regs and get a builder to do it. Worth checking before you rip it out like we did!

DH just covered up our old, mucky fireplace with plasterboard and we installed this wall mounted fireplace (www.westcountryfires.co.uk/courts-novo-landscape-flueless-fire-p-47.html) in our bedroom! Very low maintainence and lovely.

We paid £1200 for a complete do-over (new inser, surround, hearth incl removal old, disconnection gas, replastering around old fire)