Real fire fireplace - back of chimneybreast behind grate wearing out

usignuolo

We live in a mid Victorian house and have kept the real fire fireplace in the front room. In winter we like to sit in there with a real fire - it has a traditional grate. This year however I noticed that the fireplace at the back of the grate is wearing out - what is involved in replacing/relining it with fire clay or similar. I do not want to lose the original Victorian marble fireplace and tiles I have at present.

suegoo

You can buy fire cement at any diy shop and patch it up yourself if it's not too bad. I used it to fill cracks in mine and it's still fine a couple of years later.

muckybutt

Easy enough repair if you are fairly handy, you can go down the route of using fire cement, but that will only be a short term solution, what you really want / need is new fire bricks or a new fire brick backing.

Another easy way to remidy is to use vermiculite board cut to size and held in place with fire cement, all of which you can get off ebay