So the house we are closing on in a couple weeks has a couple of strange looking fireplace hearth things in the kitchens both upstairs and down that they currently have gas ranges sitting in front of or slightly into. They kind of appear to be the back side of the fireplaces to the house next door but they are about 5 feet tall and are square recesses about the width of a conventional range which probably had some sort of wood stoves recessed into them when the house was built? It’s obvious that they couldn’t be easily removed – especially if they are indeed connected to the house next door as they are brick and this brick appears to run all the way to the ceiling on both floors. Does anyone have pictures or suggestions about what to do with them to incorporate them into the rooms and what they were for originally? The house would have originally been a 1 family so I find it odd that there is one upstairs in what would have probably been an upstairs bedroom. We would like to make that room into a master bath. In the matching room below, which is the going to remain the kitchen we would like to somehow incorporate it into the room but we would also like to get a nice Wolf or Viking stove so I don’t think one would fit back into that recess, but it would be cool if it indeed has an open chimney that could double as a vent for the stove. Downstairs they do have a ventahood stuck into this slot and have glued on some copper colored tiles all around that area. Curious if anyone else has these in their houses and what you did with them? I suppose the one upstairs could become a linen closet or something as there are also regular type fireplaces on the opposite walls in what will be the bedroom upstairs and the dining area below that we will refinish as decorative or put gas logs in. Would love to see pics of what others have done with these things and know what their original purpose was. I tried to post a pic but for some reason it wont upload.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
So the house we are closing on in a couple weeks has a couple of strange looking fireplace hearth things in the kitchens both upstairs and down that they currently have gas ranges sitting in front of or slightly into. They kind of appear to be the back side of the fireplaces to the house…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":137512,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"schneps_byline":"","schneps_post_style":"","schneps_post_source":"","schneps_syndicated_read_more":"","schneps_post_source_sitename":"","schneps_syndicated_thumb_html":"","schneps_syndicated_thumb_src":"","schneps_post_source_shortname":"","schneps_post_source_url":"","schneps_post_source_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[86],"tags":[],"districts":[],"class_list":["post-55080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fireplacemantle"],"acf":[],"parsely":{"version":"1.1.0","canonical_url":"https:\/\/brownstoner.com\/forum-archive\/2011\/04\/kitchen-hearths\/","smart_links":{"inbound":0,"outbound":0},"traffic_boost_suggestions_count":0,"meta":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","headline":"Kitchen Hearths?","url":"http:\/\/www.brownstoner.com\/forum-archive\/2011\/04\/kitchen-hearths\/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"http:\/\/www.brownstoner.com\/forum-archive\/2011\/04\/kitchen-hearths\/"},"thumbnailUrl":"","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":""},"articleSection":"Fireplace\/Mantle","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"greenpoint_southerners"}],"creator":["greenpoint_southerners"],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Forum Archive","logo":""},"keywords":[],"dateCreated":"2011-04-08T21:19:36Z","datePublished":"2011-04-08T21:19:36Z","dateModified":"2011-04-08T22:11:32Z"},"rendered":"