Bricking Up Fireplace

tomelk31

We currently have an old Gas Fire with surround. We have had the gas fire disconnected from the Gas supply and now looking at bricking up the fireplace so we can plaster over it.

We have just been quoted £420 (South East) for removing the old fireplace, bricking up (with air vent), levelling floor if required and capping off at the top. I feel this is something we could do ourselves and save that money for other areas of the house.

Has anyone done this before? What did you need to do? Anything we need to be aware off?

glasgowdan

I'm literally in the middle of doing this in two rooms. Removing the fireplace, brick surround and hearth was easy with an sds drill and chisel bit. I've used a bunch of old bricks from the corner of the garden, 4:1 builders sand/cement mixed in a bucket with a trowel to a fairly dry consistency. Just done it all by eye. Bolster and 1kg hammer to break bricks in half to fit.

If the floor needs doing you can use self levelling compound.

I've not done the plastering yet but will be doing it myself. I reckon the job can be done diy by a total amateur in 2 days and maybe £40 materials.

Only issue may be the gas pipe location...is it well behind where the bricks would go?

tomelk31

Thanks, thats exactly what I wanted to hear

The Gas supply is to the side of the fireplace and we have had it capped off all ready so this should be a fairly straight forward job. We are having other areas of the house plastered so we will get this done after.

Thanks again!

EmmyLou30

We had the gas supply professionally capped off when we had our boiler fitted, then removed the old gas fire with its surround and hearth, removed the concrete fire back and then bricked it up with those white insulation blocks and fitted a ventilation plastic sliding vent at the bottom. The floor was a chipboard 'suspended' floor on top of concrete so had to fill in the gap where the hearth had been and then just had the plasterer patch over the mess when we had the ceilings skimmed so didn't cost us more than the price of a bit of chipboard flooring and a few blocks and mortar. Definitely a job a confident DIYer can tackle.

And in the spirit of being MSE we sold the old marble haerth and fire surround on the local selling facebook page :-)

glasgowdan

Voila!

Got to do the plastering next. As far as I can tell it's a couple of thick layers of some kind of rough filler, then two coats of finishing plaster. No idea what any of it's called... I'll get googling. Plus the wee plastic vent.