Old Brick Fireplace Advice and Tips gratefully received.

[GeorgeB]

Hello, I have been a follower of the forum for some time, it has been so useful. I am currently restoring a timber framed house in Exeter, Devon. Parts of it I am working on myself, I am hoping to restore this fireplace and re=point in lime render. Parts of the house our 16th Century with a lot of it Georgian (all covered up with modern plasterboard like this wall). Any advice or tips on the fireplace would be amazing. Am not going to remove the other breeze blocks until I have worked out a way to secure the brick arch as it is rather fragile and wobbly.

Does anybody have any idea of the age from these pictures? It was a shop in at least as far back as the 1850's.

Any good ideas for securing the arch? I was thinking of propping up and reinstalling brick by brick.

To both the far left and right of the arch, that full-size brick looks like it should clearly be sitting on something, any ideas what might be missing?

Thanks so much for your time any feedback gratefully received.

Thanks
George

 

[Zebra]

It looks very nice. Is that a pipe coming through in the first picture?
I'm no expert, my experience is just that I've done up one house of a similar age myself, including lots of repointing and brickwork repairs. Based on my limited experience however, I would think you have two options:
1. Dig out any loose mortar and repoint the face now in lime - probably a putty based mix as it's soft bricks and it's indoors, I don't think I'd be tempted to use NHL. Shove the new mortar in very deep, fill all the gaps. Use a churn brush to texturise the face. Then when this has gone off and hardened, it will be secure enough for you to remove the blocks and repoint the underside and the inside (doesn't look comfortable to do as it looks quite small, but contortionism and good stomach muscles are sometimes required.....)
2. Make a former out of plywood to fit in the hole. Take the blocks out now and if bricks fall out, keep a note of their positions. Rebuild using the former to create the shape of the arch.

When I got access to the inside of my chimney, I pulled out any loose bricks and laid them on the floor in their relative positions. I worried it would all fall down but obviously the house has settled so that those bricks are no longer load bearing, and in the end I made a hole you could have crawled through before getting to something solid enough to start rebuilding. Higher up on the chimney the mortar was dust, and I was able to pull it all out, the whole depth save for a centimetre or so, and repoint a small section at a time, and it all held. What I'm trying to say is don't be worried about making it worse before you make it better. The house will still stand and the worst that can happen is you've got a bigger repair to do.

Yes it looks like something should be under those side bricks. Hmmm. Not sure what. I think it would hold structurally without, though, as the sideways pressure on the arch bricks is what keeps them up. It could be left as an interesting curiosity.

 

[88v8]

Hello and welcome.

Quite an undertaking.
Point, then as you say render. That wall was never meant to be seen in the rough.

Those bricks forming the spring, must have been sitting on something.
At the moment it's all static, but if you or a subsequent owner were to light a fire in there it will become dynamic due to expansion and contraction, and personally in the interests of its long-term stability I would prefer something under those springs.
What I might do, see the stones in the row just beneath the spring, if one were to remove the stone beneath the spring brick and replace it with a wider stone then it would act as a corbel with the spring brick sitting on it. Does that make sense?
Can't see how the layering is on the right, but it would work on the left.
Fiddly without the whole lot falling down, but as you're going to take the arch down anyway.........

Needs a lot of chutzpah and vision to start a restoration like this, I dare say it was all perfectly liveable before you set about it !

Inside the chimney, is it parged? Or has it all fallen off?

Ivor

 

[Easrow]

Arches are normally self supporting but when we opened up and restored our fireplace we found that a piece of metal was mortared into the walls of the uprights and then followed the shape if the arch. I'm sure it's an old cart spring upside down.

 

[88v8]

Yes, a support of wrought iron was quite common under wide arches and those that are rather flat. We have one over one of our fireplaces. About 3" wide and a quarter inch thick.

But with those spring bricks, don't see how that could have been the case here.
I think the opening looks narrow enough and the arch steep enough, that it would be self-supporting.

Ivor

 

[Greg.Hobson]

Hi there.

I'll start with the "I am no expert" phrase. My own house was originally a barn that was converted to houses over a century ago. As a barn, it did not have chimneys. To create chimneys, the inner leaf of the rubble-filled walls was taken out and rebuilt with a void behind it. This went from the ground floor all the way up 3 stories and the attic to the top. I know this because the top floor was not plastered and I could see the different stone as well as the less-than-perfect stonemasonry of the conversion.

As I look at your fireplace, I see the same effect in brick running up from the arch almost to the ceiling. It set me wondering, is the "original" front of the fireplace opening level with the face of the wall? Could it be that this fireplace was a later introduction after it stopped being a shop? If yes, would this make you take a few steps back and consider the wall as a whole (pardon the unintended pun)?

The other contributors (all of whom almost undoubtedly with more experience than I) have concentrated on the arch and its mechanics. I feel that the whole wall should be considered as a piece and the thinking start from there. IMHO the bricks detract from the look of the wall and they appear to be an afterthought and look a bit of a bodge. I would think big. Can you source the same stone that appears in the rest of the wall? If yes, then consider a full repair all the way up to the ceiling and do it well.

All of which is pretty irrelevant if you then plaster over it, but you will know that what you put back was sound in both form and function.