Removing a chimney breast with an angled flue

magicmarv

I have a 1920's house which originally had a fireplace in both the dining room (pictured below) and the living room (other side of the right-hand wall).

I'm thinking about making more space in my dining room by removing the dark blue chimney breast area. It is so large as I have one chimney which both fireplaces share. I believe the original fireplace is where the cutouts in the wall are and the flue runs up at an angle to the right corner. (The rooms on the floor above prove that).

I've seen that people can remove chimney breasts but I'm not sure how the angle of the flue complicates things, and whether crucially it makes it alot more expensive? 

It's worth noting that this is a party wall. I believe we share the chimney stack with our neighbour and would only be looking to remove the chimney breast from this room.

So is it possible? Any advice welcome for this novice home improver.

sp

stuart45

You need to talk to an SE about it. Will need steels put in to support the chimney. It also needs to be signed off by Building Control.

35har1old

magicmarv said:

I have a 1920's house which originally had a fireplace in both the dining room (pictured below) and the living room (other side of the right-hand wall).

I'm thinking about making more space in my dining room by removing the dark blue chimney breast area. It is so large as I have one chimney which both fireplaces share. I believe the original fireplace is where the cutouts in the wall are and the flue runs up at an angle to the right corner. (The rooms on the floor above prove that).

I've seen that people can remove chimney breasts but I'm not sure how the angle of the flue complicates things, and whether crucially it makes it alot more expensive? 

It's worth noting that this is a party wall. I believe we share the chimney stack with our neighbour and would only be looking to remove the chimney breast from this room.

So is it possible? Any advice welcome for this novice home improver.

sp

You say it's a party wall and it is shared with your neighbour you might be removing there flue as well.
Do they have same projection in there rooms.
I used to own a terrace house the chimneys where on the opposite wall but when they had there fire 🔥 lite you could feel the heat radiating through  the brick

silvercar

we have had/ have a similar set up. Remember that you need to check whatever is above, it is quite likely that there will be some sort of chimney breast going all the way up to the roof. This will need supporting and gallow brackets are no longer approved, so it’s likely to be RSJs required.

In our case the whole chimney had been removed upstairs, so it was just a case of removing downstairs. We decided to keep the appearance in one room and remove in the room back to back, so giving us space for built in cupboards in one room that only took the place of the chimney breast. Structural Engineer thought it may need an RSJ to support the angled flue coming off the original chimney breast, but once the removal was done it was easier just to remove the angled part.