Bye Bye, Old Ugly Fireplace!

Brent Dowell

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Reno NV
Well, this morning I woke up, got on the interwebs, drank some coffee.

Went back to the living room. Made some waffles, drank more coffee, turned on the TV. Accidently got on some 'home improvment' type shows.

Drank a little more coffee.

Looked at the ugly fireplace. Drank a little more coffee.

Decided that this was the day the ugly, dangerous, I don't feel safe building a fireplace in, heat stealing, (did I mention ugly) fireplace needed to die.

So I ripped the sucker out....

Next weekend, roof repair. I figure the thing has been leaking for 20 years, another week won't kill it....

I've finally got a project!!!

I plan on replacing the fireplace with a 'media' alcove. Thinking something kind of craftsman like. The new fireplace will go on the left. Will order it this week.

I just couldnt take it anymore!!!!



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Wow all that coffee worked, sure gave you the energy to really make that old fireplace go away:thumb: Look forward to the new improved version. I love craftsman design so I am going to closely watch your build:thumb::lurk:
 
When we built this house we couldn't get a wood burning fireplace. LOML bought an electric insert from Lowes. I built a fireplace enclosure for it. I'll take pics and post em soon. the insert coll it just plugs in to a wall socket and you can have flames or flames and heat.
 
Where I live, we are on 'all electric'. No gas lines. The gas fireplaces are super convenient, and provide heat, but not sure how efficient that is. I guess I could run some propane, but Hank Hill aside, that may not be all that cost effective either.

One of my main goals with this project is purely functional. A way of heating up the majoritiy of the house in the winter. The fireplace I'm going to get will have an enclosed combustion chamber, fans for the blowing out the heat, and will use outside air for combustion. They can be pretty efficient from what I hear.

We currently have electric baseboards, which, to be honest, I like from the quiet and steadyness of the heat, but I don't like from the amount of electricity they consume... If I can come up with a way of heating the house during the daylight hours with wood, I like that idea. I could either buy several hundred dollars of wood, or go and collect my own, and come out way ahead over electric heat...
 
I wish I could get rid of my fireplace that easy. It's brick, 6' wide, and the previous owners painted it baby blue.:doh: They did this, then put an insert in it.:huh: But it does work fairly well. Look forward to seeing the rest of your progress, and maybe I should start drinking coffee. :thumb: Jim.
 
I wish I could get rid of my fireplace that easy. It's brick, 6' wide, and the previous owners painted it baby blue.:doh: They did this, then put an insert in it.:huh: But it does work fairly well. Look forward to seeing the rest of your progress, and maybe I should start drinking coffee. :thumb: Jim.


Might there be a way to remove the paint. Say like sealing the area off with plastic & blasting it with some sort of soft media or what ever will remove the paint without damaging the surface or morter.
 
Deserts are warm, in the SUMMER!!!!


Very rarely is it warm, even at night in the summer, but the winters do get a bit chilly! Fortunately, firewood is close by, in the Sierras!
 
Very Good point Rennie!

I've been camping all around the west and have seen many folks collecting wood on our national forests. Guess I'll need to get a trailer and a big ole chainsaw and use firewood collection for a vacation every now and then!...

As it is, I've got a huge pile of vegetation waiting for burn season. You'd be surprised at the amount of combustibles the desert can grow.

As a side note, I did manage to plant 2 cherry trees yesterday. Digging the holes took about 2 hours per hole, and an electric jackhammer to break up the ground!
 
What's going to work really well is the hole in the wall is a few inches wider than the TV, So I should be able to work up some kind of built in that should work out pretty well...
 
Oh, one of the funniest things is I don't think they had the chimney anchored in real well. When I took out the fireplace, the chimney on the roof 'shrank' by about 4 feet! Looks pretty funny up there right now, sitting flat on the roof..
 
the furnace yu mentioned are pretty good as gas furnace go brent,, and the idea of making this space into something usable is a great idea!!! yu will get a lot more use out of the entertainment area yu build than the space that fireplace took..:thumb::thumb:
 
Took Friday off and went to the Reno Air Races. All I can say is 'Wow' that was amazing. Saw the blue angels, some national guard pilots, the SR-71, and some races.

Saturday started up on the 'hole in the wall'. Since we had access to the back of the shower in the guest bathroom, decided to take advantage of the situation and replace the old valve. It was never installed properly by the previous owners and would move several inches when you tried to open the valve, etc..

That was the biggest problem I had. I've worked with copper pipe and solder a fair amount, but for whatever reason, the new solder and flux I picked up (bernzomatic brand) at HD just would not work right. I could not get those joints to seal. Fortunately, I had a bunch of good old stuff that worked great.

Added an outlet to the back of the alcove, ran a wire for a light in the closet.

Got some drywall up.

Still have the old chimney flange on the roof with a hill billy cardboard and duct tape cap. No rain in the forecast, so I'm good to go for a while...

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Just a single storey, but one of the previous owners was 'creative' in the way they did things. That creativity was the main reason I decided to pull out the fireplace! :D

I don't really know the order of all the renovations, but the house was added on probably a couple of times.

Those two vent stacks were joined up at the top, so I just changed where they joined....

At least now I'm at the point where I know what I have to work with in terms of space for making this a 'media' alcove. The good news is it's a couple of inches wider than the TV we have. Time to get busy on sketchup I reckon and figure out what to make...
 
Good work so far Brent. Yeah, baby blue. They did the same thing to the brick that is on the built in breakfast counter. :dunno:
Bart, that was my first thought...unfortunately, it's my wife's last thought. :rolleyes: Guess who wins?? I'm thinking when we pull the carpet to put in tile, that would be the perfect time to sand/bead blast, but she won't even listen to the idea. So we may try to strip with the citrus stuff, or faux paint the brick. If it's faux painting, she gets to do it. I'm staying away. :thumb: Jim.
 
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