Fireplace Demolition
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- Опубліковано 5 вер 2024
- Watch as we remove our fireplace to utilize the wasted 40 square feet of our new house and open up two rooms. This thing was a beast! We filled up a 10 yard dumpster with weight capacity of 10 tons plus piles in the garage. Then we ordered a 2nd dumpster and filled that one up too. Now we have Popeye arms and sore backs!
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Please leave any questions or comments below! Thanks for watching.
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Aesthetically the right thing to do for your home. That monstrosity was eating up a ton of floor space if you're not actively using wood to heat the home instead of gas or electric. Plus it's a constant maintenance item versus just a plain roof and simple vent stack. Great job, tons of labor. Gives me confidence that we can tackle our crumbling exterior chimney that has been neglected by prior owners for decades.
Thanks for the comment. This double fireplace had lots and lots of bricks and cinder blocks. It took us about 4 days to demolish and two dumpsters. We had a third person help one of those days, otherwise it was just the 2 of us. We also were taking care to remove the bricks in whole pieces to save for another project. We had an exterior door removed and filled to match the existing brick facade, and we used some for part of our home addition. So if you were to just go at this project with a jack hammer without much care of saving anything then we think it wouldn't take NEARLY as long! Good luck and don't hurt yourself!
I just finished doing this. It's a young man's game, and at 61, it was a chore! I tried using the little breaker like yours, it was no match. I had to a rent a 27-lb Bosch breaker, got it down in 4 or 5 days.
Sore muscles? YES!
Awesome! I bet you feel great now that it is all done! We used the little breaker because we needed to save full bricks to fill in an exterior door that we removed. It took longer but we were trying to be slow anyway so we didn't hurt our backs! Our mason did a fantastic job, the patch matches completely and now you'd never know there was a door there!
@@mission-DIY That's so funny - I did the same thing (save some bricks for an exterior door I was closing in). Fortunately, I already had some bricks, so only needed 20 or 30. I easily saved that many, even with the bigger hammer.
Wow! That was quite a project! Thanks for posting. I'm considering a DIY rennovation and the decorative rock is stopping me. If it goes all the way up through the attic then obviously I cannot simply remove the rock that shows, so it was good for me to see that it's a strong possibility that it goes all the way up. The decorative rock is also above the roof. My roof has a very low rise so getting into the attic to check isn't feasible unless I borrow someone's teenager to crawl in and take pictures. Ugh. Anyhow, it was interesting, thanks for sharing!
As I homeowner who does a lot of construction projects myself, I can greatly appreciate all the hard work you put into this! Great job! I’d like to do the same with my chimney and fireplace.
Great video. I'm considering doing the exact same thing to open up our living room, so it's nice to see that it has been done by a DIY'er. We have a 2-sided FP on the first floor and a single FP directly below it in the basement.
Great! It was a lot of work but well worth it to open up the space both on the main floor and in the basement for us. Good luck on your project. Let us know how it goes!
Recently removed old brick fireplace. Previous owner just hid it behind a wall instead of demo. Removed chimney right before new roof. Feel safer now due to living in earthquake zone.
Your home was probably built around the same time ours was (1955) judging by the constructing materials. We couldn’t do this at our home, well as easily.. The fireplace foundation acts as a load bearing wall for a good portion of our floor joists and part of the main beam rests on it too. The ceiling joists rests on it too in the attic. So our fireplace structural parts help hold up the house. tThe hearth support is actually a wall with another cavity instead of a cantilevered poured slab like most homes have. Certainly overbuilt. It would be nice for us to open it up but being that it’s smack dab in the middle of the house and also provides structural support to the floor and ceiling, it would be a huge expense to remove it as an engineer would have to be involved.
I'd do the same, that extra space is so much more valuable.
I'm going to demolish mine as well, it's blocking my planned patio roof
Just had mine built by hand from brick. But luckily mine built on the wall that goes outside so it doest take up any room. This video shows the opposite:-)
Taking ours down definately made us appreciate the work involved to build the fireplaces!
I was watching your brick fireplace demolition video. I have the same type of fireplace in my home. 2 on main floors and one more in above floor bedroom. So three fireplaces in total in my home. Your video was really helpful to understand the concept. I don’t want to demolish all my 3 chimneys because it is too much work but I have another plan i want to remove both main floor woodburning fireplaces & put electric one. For which one thing I want to understand is if we can fit one electric transparent fireplace both sided glass which works for both our rooms. Is there any possibility that I can remove only portion of wall or bricks of inside structure
You may want to consult an engineer about this. Have you taken a look in your attic to see what the structure looks like? It could give you a better idea of how the chimneys either separate or come together before exiting the roof above and before entering the 2nd floor.
For our situation, the fireplaces on the main floor were definitely holding up the bricks in the attic. So if we were to have replaced the fireplaces with glass ones we would have needed a lintel. I believe they come in various materials including stone and metal, so it can be hidden behind the facade. A lintel is similar to a header inside of a wall that is above a window or a door. It is a horizontal piece of wood that supports the weight of the roof over a window/door. I hope that helps!
Did you find out if the fireplace was loadbearing? Needed an engineer or permit?
Hey there, thanks for your questions! Typically fireplaces are not load-bearing most codes require that walls around the fireplace are the load bearing ones. The house can't be structurally connected to the fireplace or the chimney because the entire fireplace can burn down without touching the structure. The surrounding walls hold everything up and are the load bearing walls. This fireplace was not load-bearing either. It might depend on the city you are in, but we did not need a permit to tear down the fireplace. Because it was structurally independent there was no need to consult an engineer. There was a header that was lower than the 8 ft ceiling so we had a carpenter raise it up to ceiling height!
Really good info!! Thank you!! Always remove from the top down right to prevent it collapsing on the house 😮
I wouldn’t have removed the whole fire place I’d of removed the outer thirds and left the middle as a feature
Agree that it would be a shame to not have a fireplace! But we did end up installing a new gas fireplace in our family room addition. For us it made sense to remove this one because we needed space to expand the kitchen and add a first floor laundry/mud room. It aslo opened up the space which is what we wanted. Thanks for your feedback!
Great work. Love the open space. How long did it take you?
Thank you! It was a lot of work and the whole thing was SOLID! It took us about 4 days. Just the 2 of us for three days four people on the last day. I think it would take way less time if you aren't trying to save any of the bricks. We had to save a bunch to fill in a door opening on the outside of the house and wanted the bricks to be an exact match!
@@mission-DIY Great information and thanks for sharing. We have a massive fireplace that divides the house front to back. The front room has lots of windows and great sunlight while the back room (kitchen and dinning area) is "dark" with the 1970 stone fireplace blocking views to the front and the sunlight! After watching your video we are looking at removing it to open the space which will allow for a more modern and bigger kitchen layout.
@@jimgrandmi Sounds like you will enjoy the space more once you take out that fireplace! Exactly why we removed ours. Keep in mind that it is super dusty, so mask off the rest of the hosue, close and mask off the HVAC vents, and turn off the furnace/AC! Also choose and plan for respecitive contractors to come out immediately after demo to repair roof, ceiling, and floor!
Great video. What made you decide to demo it instead of remodeling it?
It was too huge, 4 foot by 10 foot, and in the way of our remodel plans :)
@@mission-DIY was the cost of patching the roof a lot?
@@rhyno_777 Hard to say because we left the tarp over it for 10 months and then had our framers patch it for us when they built our living room addition. We estimate the it would be around $500 or less for materials including framing, plywood, roof paper, shingles, nails, etc. Our framers rolled it into their price and we had the whole roof replaced too (new shingles) so the roofing patch was rolled into that cost as well. It wouldn't be too difficult with basic framing skills, but we decided to have it done. It should have been done much sooner but the framing was delayed for a loooong time!
@@rhyno_777 check out the framing work here: facebook.com/MissionDoItYourself/posts/2146171082307539
As someone who would need to pay to have this done, have you ever estimated how much you saved by DIY?
No, sorry! Probably more than we would want to pay since we are DIYers! We don't like paying anyone to do anything that we can do ourselves haha. If we were to do this again I think we'd hire it out though since we don't have as much time to do a project like this!
Impressive team work. So this was done to open up space? How'd the finished product come out and what did you end up doing for the water heater exhaust?
Thanks for watching. Yes, we removed the fireplaces to open up space, about 40 square feet, between the front formal living room and the back room and kitchen. We tore out the back room with all the windows seen in the video and built an addition off the back of the house. We also cut the front formal living room in half and made a huge main floor laundry room on one side, 10' x 17', and added a small half bath on the other side making the rest of the space just a smaller formal/entry area. We decided to put in a tankless water heater and had to rout the exhaust and intake piping through new holes in the foundation that go directly outside. Check out our blog here for the new floor plan: www.missiondiy.com/for-the-home/home-addition-floor-plan-and-update/
How long did this process take? Did you find that the chimney was tied into the structural support of the house at all?
Our house is a ranch style with basement so we had to only tear down 2 stories (first floor and basement) plus the part in the attic and above the roof. Ours was a double fireplace plus stack for the water heater, about 4ft x 10ft. This removal took the two of us 4-5 days. We had another person help on one of the days. It also filled 2 masonry dumpsters despite saving a huge stack of good bricks to reuse on another project! A working chimney should never be structurally tied to the support of a house and ours stood alone. If one is structurally supporting the house then it was built incorrectly. The part in the basement was composed of masonry blocks each filled with concrete to provide a good foundation but not fun to remove and really heavy!
@@mission-DIY your setup is similar to ours... ranch with basement...two fireplaces plus non-working water boiler vent. both flues were cracked when we bought the house in January. We priced having them relined then couldn't get anyone to do the job... then we had an earthquake (in NC) about 2 months ago and everything is unstable...the bricks and cinder blocks are cracked. the part in the basement has a crack about 5' long and shifted with a 1/4" gap between. so we're probably going to do this. soon. I've been nervous...but I've done lots of different diy projects. but I don't want the house to fall down!! It shouldn't...but still nervous! Did you have to get permits to do this? I've not researched to that point yet. You've inspired! thank you!!
@@onemomsdrm Thanks for your comment! Sorry to hear about your issues! You'll have to plan how to reroute your exhaust pipes before you tear your fireplace down. We were not living in the house at the time so it made things a bit different. We got a demo permit for the entire house so the fireplace was included in that. Every city and state is a bit different with their permit requirements. You should check with your city just in case. Our fireplaces were not structrual and typically fireplaces are NOT structruall! What that said, you never know! It could have been built imporperly! If you are able to investigate from the basement you should be able to tell if there are adequate support beams/joists in the basement ceiling surrounding the cinderblock! This is super messy and dusty! Get good plastic and block off the dusty areas to protect the rest of the house and cover the airducts and return air ducts. Turn the furnace/AC off. Get a space heater if needed. We are not used to doing this type of work, so we worked slowly and made sure not to hurt our backs. Good luck!
@@mission-DIY I'm wondering how long days those 4-5 days were? I'm thinking about removing a similar chimney, and want to free up enough time for the job.
@@andrekapelrud9623 they were long days! We probably got started around 9am and ended around 6-7. It took a while to mask everything off inside the house too. But if you are going to just bulldose everything it won't take as long. We found that the original masonry work was SOLID so it took several blows for the blocks to loosen!
WHAT TOOLS DID U USE
Lots of buckets, a jackhammer, heavyweight hammers, crowbars, gloves, earplugs, safety glasses! Also, we used harnesses on the roof in case we slipped or a tool got out of hand, we didn't want to land on our heads on the ground.
You lost your furnace flue.
You are correct! We had to reroute it along with the vent for the water heater.
Music a little too much, want to hear some talking
Big mistake.
Sorry to hear that. We think it was one of the best decisions we made! It turned out great and we have so much more room :