Fireplace Demo on Dean Street
Remember when we were discussing the pros and cons of buying a house jointly with friends? Well, a couple of pals have teamed to buy a place in Boerum Hill and have documented the process in a photo set on flickr. The highlight for us are the fireplace renovation shots. Perhaps this post will get…
Remember when we were discussing the pros and cons of buying a house jointly with friends? Well, a couple of pals have teamed to buy a place in Boerum Hill and have documented the process in a photo set on flickr. The highlight for us are the fireplace renovation shots. Perhaps this post will get the attention of the owners and they can let everyone know the hows and whys of tearing open their chimneys. We can only assume the fireplaces were non-working when they bought the house…Have others done this themselves? What have you paid pros to do it?
Dean Street Brownstone Set [Flickr]
I had two fireplaces gutted and refinished. They remove all the old bricks and replaced them with firebrick. One was normal sized and the other was huge, used to be used for cooking. I lost some of the historic integrity but now feel safer especially because my house and my neighbor’s were built at the same time and there are only two courses total between us. They cost close to 3K each…the workers were there for about a week. I think I could have had it done for cheaper…
Jake the Snake:”A top mason with 15 plus years experience shouldn’t charge more than $200.00 a day.”
Are you nuts! If you can find a highly skilled craftsman (in any trade, not just masonry) who’s willing to work for $25/hr (less than half the union wage) you ain’t lookin’ in NYC. And, in my opinion, why shouldn’t these guys make as much as, say, a computer tech or whatever?
John Ife
anon 12:35,
I agree. I am wasting my time.
It’s just so much more fun screwing around than it is to actually work.
jake…grow up. do you just sit around all day waiting to attack people on a site like this? seems like you’re the one “sitting at a desk” wasting time.
We opened up the chimney’s in our place right after we purchased it. It’s messy, but it’s worth it. A GC did the masonry and installed a wood burning stove/home heating system. It doesn’t have quite the ambiance of a tradtional fireplace but is much more efficient and actually heats the house instead of pulling cold air in the way traditional fireplaces do. We vented it up the back of the house and have a fire almost every night from Dec-Feb.
North Sleeper,
Have fun getting ripped off. You sound like somebody who makes a lot of money sitting at a desk and doesn’t mind blowing some of it out the window for the “peace of mind” of hiring a company with a name like Chimney Professionals or Chimney’s-R-Us.
A top mason with 15 plus years experience shouldn’t charge more than $200.00 a day. If you want to hire somebody with a fancy company name who makes $1000.00 a day on top of paying his mason, go right ahead.
Also, I wasn’t including the cost of the actual insert in my previous figures. Once I decide which insert I want, I usually buy it from an out of state dealer to avoid sales tax.
But I understand, North Sleeper, if you don’t want to do this either, since $100.00 here or there doesn’t mean much to guy like you.
We are in the process of re-doing the fireplace on the parlor floor. Need to do alot of research if you’re doing it on your own. Regardless of what “Jake” says, masonry work is time consuming and requires patience and a bit of skill. Need to research the liner too. Our fireplace is fairly shallow, so we will need to get a wood-burning stove glass insert. No idea how much these cost or how to do it. Better half is in charge of that.
we opened one of ours. cost $4500. it was one of the first things we did, when we still had alot of reno money. sounded like a good idea, though we really haven’t used it much yet. one good thing was the guy discovered that our flu taking exhaust from our gas furnace and water heater leaked co2, and fixed it.
You don’t need “Pros” to fix a chimney for you — Chimney repair “Pros” are one of the biggest scams in construction. Just hire your regualr contractor to do the work. What’s so hard about running a new chimney liner and doing some simple masonary work?
I’ve had three-story chimney’s completely removed for five hundred dollars and others relined for about the same price.
Beware the “Pros” who charge thousands. What a ripoff!