Is company A lowballing me, or is company B trying to gouge me?

I've never lived in a house with a woodburning stove or fireplace, but this spring my wife and I bought a house with a decommissioned fireplace that I'm thinking of rehabilitating. Over the last few weeks I've read some of the articles here and looked at my house carefully enough to have a good idea what I'm dealing with. What I don't know is how much it should cost, and the ballpark figures I've gotten from the pro's I've talked to are so wildly different that I don't know what to think.

What's there now is a late 1950's heatform. The lower part visible from the room doesn't look awful, but the damper and the smoke chamber immediately above are toast -- severe rust, holes big enough to put your hand through, etc. So this fireplace will never see flame again, and since I now know how inefficient it would've been, that's not a great loss. It's an exterior brick chimney , about 21' from the top of the firebox to the top of the masonry, lined with big 13" x 13" tile, no offsets. Tiles are clean and intact but some have shifted slightly so that their edges are misaligned; exterior brick is in good shape.

What I'm interested in is a smaller insert. I'm fairly sure this would only be for occasional use, not as a constant heat source. I like the look of the VC Montpelier and the Regency Alterra. Either would require some prep work because the existing hearth extension is too small, and there's wood paneling that comes too close to the fireplace opening and would have to be cut back. But I'm a skilled woodworker and have a bit of tiling experience too, so I would do all of that preparation myself.

There's easy ladder access to the roof, and the roof is walkable. The front door of the house is almost level with the street and 20 feet from where a truck would theoretically drop off a stove; it could hardly be easier to get stuff inside.

I contacted 2 local companies, both of which seemed to be positively reviewed at one generic online review site or another. The first guy did not come out to the house, but I described the situation in some detail and he guesstimated that the VC Montpelier, installed, with chimney liner, would probably run around $4K. The second guy, whose home base was closer and who did stop by in person, guesstimated that the Regency Alterra (the CI1250, which comes standard with a fan like the VC model), installed with an insulated, heavy-gauge flexible liner, would probably run $6-7K.

Now, neither was a firm quote and this isn't an apples-to-apples comparison since they're different units and the first/cheaper guy didn't specify the weight of the liner or whether he was including insulation, but the difference seems pretty dramatic to me. Does one of these prices seem like an obvious outlier when compared to your experience? For context, this is all happening in a middle-class, inner-ring suburb of Pittsburgh. Any insight you can offer would be appreciated.

Edit: it might be relevant that the first/cheaper guy owns a showroom and is a dealer for both Regency and Vermont Castings, while the more expensive guy usually installs Napoleon products *but is not a dealer for any brand.*

Wow, a lot of activity overnight. Thanks for all the thoughts so far. I've got some pics for you.

As to the condition of the heatform, it's well beyond the 'can I poke holes in it?' stage. Parts of the smoke chamber lining are, uh... absent. It is, however, a real masonry chimney with firebrick on the bottom of the firebox, an ash pit and a cleanout in the basement, and the brick is in good condition. On Friday evening, in preparation for the installer's visit, I vacuumed about 3 gallons of ash from the smoke shelf, and removed a pancake of mortar the size of a dinnerplate that some sloppy masons had dropped down the chimney and left there. This morning I stuck my camera up into the smoke chamber and took this:




Here's a shot looking up the chimney from inside the smoke chamber:



Don't worry about the blobby dark area on the right, up near the top; it's an artifact from my camera, not something stuck in the chimney.

And here are some basic dimensions:


Addressing some of the other questions and concerns:

Our property is on a steeply sloped lot; the back door exits at grade level, from the basement. There's a stairway between the small front yard and the much larger back yard, and vehicle access is from the front. There's no place that's both easy to drive up to and appropriate for a large woodpile. Not even a wheelbarrow would help much, so unloading firewood would involve carrying it by the armload down a flight of uneven stairs to the back of the house. Though I love the smell of woodsmoke, I'm skeptical that I'd ever be using this as a primary heat source.

I told the installer who visited yesterday about the severe rust in the smoke chamber, but he didn't use a camera or mirror to look at it himself; the worst he could see was the split front edge of the smoke shelf. He did get a look up through the chimney and noted the misaligned tiles, but didn't seem at all concerned about the condition of either the chimney or the rusted metal. Does this even matter, considering that we're talking about inserts and a full, insulated relining, and it's all surrounded by brick?

He did suggest finding a small soapstone freestanding stove to stick in the fireplace, the rationale being that it would somehow lessen the amount of prep work I'd have to do (hearth extension, wood trim, etc.) I haven't done much reading about such stoves so my understanding of what's possible there is basically nil, but I couldn't follow his reasoning. Though the installer is an older guy who's been in the business a long time and has many positive reviews, I'm a bit suspicious of his judgement because as we talked about the project, he dismissed some of my concerns about the depth of the existing hearth extension and the thickness of the wood facing surrounding the opening, even though it's clear to me that neither meets current code.

I don't see anything magically difficult about an install, but I hesitate for two reasons.

First, my wife is concerned that I might bite off more than I can easily chew, make a mess of the living room and leave it that way for a long time. In our last house I decided to completely remodel the kitchen -- gutting it, moving windows and doors, rewiring, plumbing, building cabinets from scratch -- and it took a long time to wrap that up. I think I've learned my lesson, but she's got legitimate reasons to be concerned.

More importantly, we only moved to Pittsburgh in January, and I don't yet know anyone local who'd be up for helping with the project. I'm guessing that moving the stove into the house, lifting it into place and threading the liner down the chimney are all 2-man jobs at least.

If I can figure out a way around the latter obstacle, then doing the install myself is entirely possible.

Thanks for that idea, begreen; it hadn't occurred to me that a sweep might be able to help with this sort of thing.

I've spent a lot more time looking at inserts than at soapstone stoves, so I don't have a great sense of what's available. The Woodstock stoves all appear to be 28" tall, which won't fit in my firebox.

Wow, that's a very generous offer. Thank you; I may actually take you up on it.

I'm still leaning towards an insert rather than a freestanding stove. The fireplace is in the middle of a long wall in a long, narrowish room, with a couch directly opposite and a coffee table in-between, so this is a traffic area that I'd rather not constrict by having something sticking way out.

Besides finding someone (probably a sweep) who can tell me with confidence whether it's safe to install an insert in this situation, I think my main concern will be extending the hearth appropriately. The old extension is a stone slab sitting on a mortar bed that's visible from the basement, and it goes right under the face bricks on the front of the fireplace, as you can probably see in my last picture. Since it's a traffic area, I'd prefer to get the surface of the hearth level with the floor. That will mean removing most of the existing hearth extension (being careful not to break out the part that's under the facing brick), then chipping down the mortar bed underneath to make room for tile, which can be extended further into the surrounding floor as necessary..At least, that's what I think it will mean...

Expanding the opening in the wood trim and paneling around the opening won't be a problem. Another issue, though, is that the wood surrounding the opening is about 3" deep (2x4 nailers laid flat, I assume, plus 3/4" pine paneling and a decorative perimeter molding that sticks up a bit more). Since the max allowable depth of the facing is an inch and a half, I expect to build up the face of the fireplace with something noncombustible and pleasant to look at. That could be tile, too, but I'm toying with the idea of getting some granite scraps from a countertop shop; should be fairly cheap, since they wouldn't need to polish the edges. Thoughts?

While we're kicking around ideas about possible insert models, I found a classified ad for most of a Regency I1200, brand new for $300. The seller is a former Regency dealer who got out of the business a couple of years ago and still has this thing sitting around. They don't have a door or the surround plates, so I'd still have to find an active dealer willing to sell me those a la carte. How does that idea sound?