# Forum Home Renovation Brickwork  Ugly Brick Fireplace...HELP!

## interested16

Hi All, im new to posting on this forum but have been reading it for a few weeks now,great site. 
I have just bought a 1960 ish weatherboard home to renovate (first ever renovation) and im totally baffled what to do with the ugly brick fireplace.Very much open to any suggestions.Maybe i should render it or totally rip it out? I do not want a messy coal or log fire,maybe some sort of gas fire 
I have posted a couple of pics of it as it is now.There was a old gas heater fitted there which i have now ripped out.. 
Please hit me with your comments and suggestions

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## China

Render it and install a gas log fire

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## watson

:What he said: 
Its probably been offending for nearly 50 years

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## nev25

Ive got a similar thing in my house
I'm looking at covering the surround with Gyprock and building a recessed shelf/Bookcase in the part where the fire (or heater in my case) was

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## joez

> Render it and install a gas log fire

  Thats what i did.  :2thumbsup:

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## atregent

Looks almost exactly like our old one. Lovely piece of work that it was! 
This is the approach I took with it. It's only temporary, maybe 5 years, until we get stuck into the major renovations.

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## aldebaran3003

I had EXACTLY the same thing.  Previous owners had rendered over it but with everything they touched in this house they did a horrid job.  We ripped it out.  We were worried that the brick might be double bricked and go all the way through to the fireplace and chimney and be a real bugger to remove.  It turned out that the fireplace and chimney are all brick but the external brick was just facade.  So it's gone and sheeted/plastered in it's place. 
If we weren't so lucky we would have removed the mantle and boxed up from the brick facade to the ceiling with blueboard then sandstone tiled (or quartz or whatever) so it would have been a feature.

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## interested16

Thank you for the replies...I have now ripped out the whole thing and left with a big hole in the wall and floor! its the old horse hair plasterboard and im hoping a decent plasterer would be able to patch it up good?
Where the concrete hearth was i also smashed that through so im now left with a hole in the floor! I got same kind of hard wood in my bathroom which will be getting tiled so im planning robbing some boards out of there to do a patch...
Gotta remember im new to this renovating! I would love to make it a feature wall but not sure what to do or how to go about it.
Very open for any suggestions

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## munter

So how did this turn out? I have a fireplace in a similar, but not quite as demolished state and would be interested to hear more about how you went with finishing this project.
I've removed the hearth bricks but am left with a mortar level on which I was planning on laying a floor panel and then carpet - does that sound like a sensible thing to do or do I need to smash out all the mortar, rebuild the floor beams and then put a board + carpet?

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## rrobor

Such a pitty to take that firplace out. It reminded me of a wall in Jerusalem, what was it , "The wailing wall". You could have had "A screaming fireplace". Anyways remember to block the chimney up top and if you can  vent the firplace from under the floor

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## Ashore

I left mine  ( though it wasn't quite as ugly as that ) sealed off the chimley and built racks in it to hold wine , the bricks keep the temp a bit more constant , the next step is to retiled the hearth with broken tiles in the shape of wine bottles .

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## interested16

> So how did this turn out? I have a fireplace in a similar, but not quite as demolished state and would be interested to hear more about how you went with finishing this project.
> I've removed the hearth bricks but am left with a mortar level on which I was planning on laying a floor panel and then carpet - does that sound like a sensible thing to do or do I need to smash out all the mortar, rebuild the floor beams and then put a board + carpet?

  Hi there,i ended up smashing all the mortar out too and putting in beams on the wall and floor and replastered wall and put some more floooring down  which was quite a bit of work as i had to rip up the floor from my bathroom too to reapair the hole in floor where hearth was but im well glad now that i done it as looks far better,ill try attach a few pics of the nearly finished project. 
Have you got any further with your project?
havin job gettin pics attached but will try again in afternoon

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