WE REMOVED OUR CHIMNEYS OURSELVES! // London Renovation

Only four months later but we have finally got to uploading part two of our chimney removals, we did lose some of the footage unfortunately. We ended up having to remove part of a wall due to the load and rebuilt it ourselves which set us back a lot of time, but we now have the open kitchen diner we were after. If you are thinking about doing it yourselves and have any questions we will try to answer, this was about 4 grand cheaper doing it ourselves.

[@louithrottler]

We took our chimney stack down. Bungalow, so 6 courses of bricks coming up from the roof, 10 coming in from the roof and thats where we used steel gallows brackets on either side, a mate provided a steel sheet of 8mm and also used some fireproof powder/paint/i dunno (actually one detail I missed at the time, he never, good lad) and once they were bolted in place, we made the brickwork above the plate good / repointed. Then piece of swiss to lump hammer the rest of the bricks of the breast (oo-er) down to the floor. Dusty as fook and a lot of handballing bricks out the front door but the whole thing cost under £100 (2021) - obviously we had no labour costs. Brackets = screwfix, bolts the same, steel plate was free. Handy having people who know people yanno. The chimney stack needed repointing (particularly the weathered mortar at the very top...crikey) and the chimney pot was already capped off. The only 'fatal' (no one died, my wallet was injured) mistake I realised after we used Kingspan to line it with (underside of brackets) and plastered over to make it all good was: - duh, forgot to put in an air brick. Half a year later there was water ingress, damp patches. My fault. Smashed the plaster out, inserted the air brick (4 courses up from steel plate) replastered and for good measure left huge dehumidifier there after I had painted the plaster with Zinnser 123 (that stuff is boss) for a couple of days. Job well done.

[@dpp186]

Great information

[@graceanddan]

Thank you !

[@sheddweller1969]

Very similar layout to my home. I would love to do this to my home unfortunately I am a tenant so I dream of a lottery win. You have done a great job and I wish you both well in the final result. Best Wishes 👌

[@graceanddan]

Thank you !

[@yq3908]

So you had to replace the brick wall from the 1st floor because you removed the wall from the ground floor. If you left the groundfloor brickwork it would be fine?

[@grahampitt8882]

Did you remove the upper section of wall because you were removing the wall under it? Presumably if you were just removing the fireplace below but not the wall you would have left it?

[@jonathancatt5436]

Did you guys need to get any building regs first and a structural engineer to check the property first prior to removing the stack and breast?

[@graceanddan]

Hi Jonathan, we rung our local council and asked them and they said we didn't as the stack was at back of the house so didn't impact the visuals of the road. & builders confirmed our joists ran the other way so wasn't structural - hope that helps

[@1.8.100s]

DO I NEED SUPPORT BEAMS FOR A ONE STORY FIREPLACE, WITH BRICKS THAT STOP AT 1ST FLOOR CEILING?

[@Ghhyuttgg]

Did you do the plastering yourself too?

[@graceanddan]

Yes we did, it's not perfect we still need to do some touch-ups but saved us a lot of money

[@user-ww2lc1yo9c]

@@graceanddan how much money did it save?

[@July-A7]

A constructive suggestion and not a criticism. If you film doing the work as opposed to merely tellings us what was there and what you will do, you'll generate more interest in your channel.

[@graceanddan]

thanks for the feedback! I totally agree we are terrible at filming when we actually do the work. Going to try and start to do it going forwards thanks :)