Cost of opening up chimney breast for a range cooker

SB1990

I wondered if anyone could give me a rough cost if they have done this themselves recently (we are East Midlands). We have recently bought a 1930s semi detached which already has the kitchen and dining room knocked through, however they decided to keep the galley kitchen layout with a breakfast bar between the dining room and kitchen space so there is literally no top cupboard space (back door is a utility room). We want to swap the whole layout around so that the old kitchen space is the diner and have the kitchen as a large L shape with an island over the other side, opening up the chimney breast for a range cooker. That would obviously be the first thing we’d have to have done before we start and I just can’t find a rough cost anywhere. Tradesmen won’t really quote without being to come out and look and we don’t complete for a while yet. 

Any rough cost ideas from anyone? 

FreeBear

How wide is the chimney breast ?

You will need to allow 200-250mm either side for supporting brickwork, and you may well find the gather starts around 1m up from the floor - that will be a substantial amount of masonry to remove to get a usable space for a decent sized range cooker. Chances are, once you've opened up the space, the brickwork will be real grotty (soaked in ~90 years worth of soot), and need boarding out before plastering. You may find it easier just to remove the chimney breast completely.

You might get away with a £2K spend, or it might cost £5K - It really depends on how much work is involved and whether a structural engineer is needed.

Working_Mum

I had a friend who did this and she hated it - the range cooker pretty much filled the space which meant that she had no workable space for putting spoons, hot pans out of the oven etc and had to have her table directly behind her. She found it quite restrictive.
You'd also have to consider venting the cooking smells.

I recently moved and have had a chimney breast removed in my dining area - I paid for Party Wall advice, a structural engineer, steel works and plastering - I now have a lovely open space to work with - cost £3.5k or so

joe90mitch

Working_Mum said:

I had a friend who did this and she hated it - the range cooker pretty much filled the space which meant that she had no workable space for putting spoons, hot pans out of the oven etc and had to have her table directly behind her. She found it quite restrictive.
You'd also have to consider venting the cooking smells.

I recently moved and have had a chimney breast removed in my dining area - I paid for Party Wall advice, a structural engineer, steel works and plastering - I now have a lovely open space to work with - cost £3.5k or so

Just to give the other side - we just moved into a house with a range cooker in the chimney breast and it's brilliant. As ever, it's all down to individual's setups and taste. In our case it's an extended kitchen, so we have the dining table down the far end and then we have a kitchen island directly opposite the cooker - so you just turn prepare on the island, put hot dishes on it etc etc.

Guess it just depends

SB1990

FreeBear said:

How wide is the chimney breast ?

You will need to allow 200-250mm either side for supporting brickwork, and you may well find the gather starts around 1m up from the floor - that will be a substantial amount of masonry to remove to get a usable space for a decent sized range cooker. Chances are, once you've opened up the space, the brickwork will be real grotty (soaked in ~90 years worth of soot), and need boarding out before plastering. You may find it easier just to remove the chimney breast completely.

You might get away with a £2K spend, or it might cost £5K - It really depends on how much work is involved and whether a structural engineer is needed.

Thanks that’s really helpful, not sure how wide it is yet as haven’t managed to go back since lockdown to measure before we complete. Really don’t mind in the amount of work it takes just want an idea of costs at a glance ahead of getting tradesmen in to quote so I can prepare myself roughly for costs ahead of time. 

SB1990

Working_Mum said:

I had a friend who did this and she hated it - the range cooker pretty much filled the space which meant that she had no workable space for putting spoons, hot pans out of the oven etc and had to have her table directly behind her. She found it quite restrictive.
You'd also have to consider venting the cooking smells.

I recently moved and have had a chimney breast removed in my dining area - I paid for Party Wall advice, a structural engineer, steel works and plastering - I now have a lovely open space to work with - cost £3.5k or so

So the kitchen and dining room is already knocked through into once huge space, so we would have a huge kitchen with an island, the range cooker in the chimney and 2 long worktops down each wall plus the island workspace. What I meant was despite the party wall being knocked down they kept the kitchen galley layout so it was open plan but still with a tiny kitchen and less 2 walls of upper cabinets. We know someone else with the exact same house layout who did this, it looks fantastic but they couldn’t give a realistic cost as they got their chimney opened up at the same time as having the dining / kitchen wall knocked through and didn’t have an itemised cost for just the chimney as like I say it’s already knocked through into a large kitchen/diner. 

SB1990

joe90mitch said:

Working_Mum said:

I had a friend who did this and she hated it - the range cooker pretty much filled the space which meant that she had no workable space for putting spoons, hot pans out of the oven etc and had to have her table directly behind her. She found it quite restrictive.
You'd also have to consider venting the cooking smells.

I recently moved and have had a chimney breast removed in my dining area - I paid for Party Wall advice, a structural engineer, steel works and plastering - I now have a lovely open space to work with - cost £3.5k or so

Just to give the other side - we just moved into a house with a range cooker in the chimney breast and it's brilliant. As ever, it's all down to individual's setups and taste. In our case it's an extended kitchen, so we have the dining table down the far end and then we have a kitchen island directly opposite the cooker - so you just turn prepare on the island, put hot dishes on it etc etc.

Guess it just depends

This is exactly the layout we will have, dining table over the other side where the old galley kitchen once was, then 2 worktops in an L shape with the cooker in the chimney directly opposite the island, know people who have done this all as well but again they don’t know what just the price of having the chimney opened up was. I have rough coatings for everything else but the chimney is the only thing I can’t even find a ball park cost for! 

Working_Mum

What is stopping you getting a quote from a builder/whoever is doing your other works?

SB1990

Working_Mum said:

What is stopping you getting a quote from a builder/whoever is doing your other works?

Because we haven’t completed on the house yet so haven’t yet moved in, we are due to complete in a couple of months time but I want rough costs so I can plan ahead. Many tradesmen don’t want to even give a ballpark figure on the chimney without seeing the house first which we can’t do in lockdown or before we’ve moved in really. It is however far easier to get fitted kitchen and fitting quotes hence why I know those costs already. 

sew_what

We did this with our 1930's house.  10 years ago I think it was about £3k to have the wall between kitchen & dining room down. Opening up the fireplace was a day's work for someone with a cold chisel & then there were a couple of lintels installed so in the hundres of pounds rather than thousands.  The hole needs opening up almost to the ceiling to take the extractor underneath the lintels!
We had small shallow cupboards installed in front of the sides of the fireplace to take spices & oil bottles
(sorry the pictures are so huge!)

TB201196

SB1990 said:

I wondered if anyone could give me a rough cost if they have done this themselves recently (we are East Midlands). We have recently bought a 1930s semi detached which already has the kitchen and dining room knocked through, however they decided to keep the galley kitchen layout with a breakfast bar between the dining room and kitchen space so there is literally no top cupboard space (back door is a utility room). We want to swap the whole layout around so that the old kitchen space is the diner and have the kitchen as a large L shape with an island over the other side, opening up the chimney breast for a range cooker. That would obviously be the first thing we’d have to have done before we start and I just can’t find a rough cost anywhere. Tradesmen won’t really quote without being to come out and look and we don’t complete for a while yet. 

Any rough cost ideas from anyone? 

Hello,

Just wondering if you went ahead with these works, and if so what was the cost? I am currently waiting to complete on the purchase of a house and it sounds like my plans for the kitchen are similar to what yours were (swap current galley kitchen to the other side of the room where the dining room currently is, and have L shaped cupboards within the kitchen, and the cooker within the chimney breast), however, I am struggling to find costs for opening up the chimney breast for the cooker.