Installing a stud wall on existing chimney breast for tv/fire

katieort · 16 August 2019 at 12:09PM

I'm in the process of doing this in my own house. Myself and my dad are doing it ourselves, (he's a joiner/plumber/jack of all trades) You will likely need a joiner and a plasterer, but depends on what the person can do as they may be able to do the lot. Not sure cost wise, I only paid for materials - plasterboard, wood, plaster and paint. Which was around £100-150 I think altogether.

I have a chimney breast already and have built a wall about 2-3 inches around the existing chimney breast. I haven't lost that much space, and the space that is "lost" is actually evened out by the fact that there used to be a big tv unit there which took up more room, so this works and looks much better!

The tv bracket is screwed into the existing wall so it sits pretty much flush with the new wall made and looks neater. All the wires are going to be hidden behind the wall and go down into a cupboard of some sort to the right of the chimney, as that's where all the sockets are.

If you wanted a space for sky box, you would probably need a wider front to fit a shelf in for the box, or you could hollow out the chimney a bit to fit a shelf in instead, either way wouldn't be too difficult.
As others have said, having a fire and all that heat underneath isn't the best idea, but people do, do it. And if the fire isn't on often at all, and is more a feature to look at, it wouldn't hurt. Similar to how i have done the tb bracket, attach the fire to the existing wall and build up the wall around it so it sits in a sort of shelf.

Here's the work in progress:

https://imgur.com/Yzk1GW3
https://imgur.com/ENqcoYV
And the mess before:
https://imgur.com/Wj92TDT

darrenwis · 16 August 2019 at 9:03PM

This is really helpful thank you.

We may now do it like this instead, we don't necessarily need a fire:

https://www.instagram.com/p/B0_v_4VoJ9y/

The old flue is blocked with a chimney sheep at the moment, do I need to get this sealed by a specialist before building the stud wall? Does the chimney need to be blocked on the roof if we were not going to use a fire at all??

troffasky · 16 August 2019 at 10:56PM

No idea what a chimney sheep is and no time to think up any witty sheep related puns, but you shouldn't just block off a fireplace/chimney without ventilating it at both ends. You don't necessarily need an air brick in the room, if you've got a suspended floor you could extend the vent under there. Or if you're building a little recess for the Sky box, it could go in there.