My wife and I are in the middle of a new home renovation - our first. We had a nice looking fireplace on a wall with stone from the floor to ceiling. This had a gas burning insert in it. It was a bit dated but functional. We decided it would look nice if we took down half of the stone and put a large wood mantle across the top of it. This portion of house we believe was constructed in the early 40's. The house is a little under 1000 sq ft.
The image below is of the wall in question before we began removing stone.
Long story short, as we got the stone down, we found the entire wall was rotted due to water leaking in through a poorly flashed chimney and windows with rotten frames. So, down came the rest of the stone and the rotted wall behind it. When we got it all down, we found that the old fire box/heatilator was completely rusted through. So out that came. Chimney, it turned out, had been "lined" with 4" flexible dryer duct. Luckily we only used the gas insert a few times. Chimney has since been properly flashed, old windows removed and awaiting replacement. Dryer duct has been removed as well, that side of the chimney temporarily capped.
The image below shows the current state of the wall. We put a versa-lam beam in to support the floor joists above after removing the rotten studded wall.
Now for our plans. Since we have a clean slate to work with, we want to plan everything out before reconstructing the wall in front of the brick. The first thing we are going to do is increase the height of the windows to let more light in. At the same time we will re-point some spots on the chimney in which the mortar has worn a bit and has caused some weeping. We plan to build out a fireplace face that runs from floor to ceiling between the windows. A 10" to 12" tall raised hearth in front, and built in benches for wood and kindling to be stored in underneath each window. We intend to have the chimney relined (it is 13" square tile, slightly offset from the center of the fireplace). We want to put in a Jotul F100 wood stove.
My question is this:
Since I am putting in a stove, to what extent do I need to rebuild the firebox? The brick in the back wall shown is the outside brick of the chimney, so I know I need to put something there. Does it need to be a full fledged fireplace? I plan to have a couple masons come out and look at it, but I want to have a good idea of what I need before they come. One thought I had was to build a smaller prefab fireplace system (like this) inside the existing opening, finish it complete, then put the stove in front of it. However, that has a significant cost associated with it and seems somewhat redundant. Note that since the rusted firebox was removed, there is no smoke shelf or damper.
The image below shows the rough idea, sketched in autocad. It includes the prefab fireplace mentioned above.
Any input would be appreciated. We don't want to waste money, and at the same time time, we don't want to build a sub par setup.
Thank you in advance for your input. Please forgive any incorrect jargon that I have used. This is an unexpected problem, and I am only a few days into my research here.
The image below is of the wall in question before we began removing stone.
Long story short, as we got the stone down, we found the entire wall was rotted due to water leaking in through a poorly flashed chimney and windows with rotten frames. So, down came the rest of the stone and the rotted wall behind it. When we got it all down, we found that the old fire box/heatilator was completely rusted through. So out that came. Chimney, it turned out, had been "lined" with 4" flexible dryer duct. Luckily we only used the gas insert a few times. Chimney has since been properly flashed, old windows removed and awaiting replacement. Dryer duct has been removed as well, that side of the chimney temporarily capped.
The image below shows the current state of the wall. We put a versa-lam beam in to support the floor joists above after removing the rotten studded wall.
Now for our plans. Since we have a clean slate to work with, we want to plan everything out before reconstructing the wall in front of the brick. The first thing we are going to do is increase the height of the windows to let more light in. At the same time we will re-point some spots on the chimney in which the mortar has worn a bit and has caused some weeping. We plan to build out a fireplace face that runs from floor to ceiling between the windows. A 10" to 12" tall raised hearth in front, and built in benches for wood and kindling to be stored in underneath each window. We intend to have the chimney relined (it is 13" square tile, slightly offset from the center of the fireplace). We want to put in a Jotul F100 wood stove.
My question is this:
Since I am putting in a stove, to what extent do I need to rebuild the firebox? The brick in the back wall shown is the outside brick of the chimney, so I know I need to put something there. Does it need to be a full fledged fireplace? I plan to have a couple masons come out and look at it, but I want to have a good idea of what I need before they come. One thought I had was to build a smaller prefab fireplace system (like this) inside the existing opening, finish it complete, then put the stove in front of it. However, that has a significant cost associated with it and seems somewhat redundant. Note that since the rusted firebox was removed, there is no smoke shelf or damper.
The image below shows the rough idea, sketched in autocad. It includes the prefab fireplace mentioned above.
Any input would be appreciated. We don't want to waste money, and at the same time time, we don't want to build a sub par setup.
Thank you in advance for your input. Please forgive any incorrect jargon that I have used. This is an unexpected problem, and I am only a few days into my research here.
!
