This was an exciting job in Acomb where I spent 3/4 of time with preparation and it just flew together in a few hours afterwards.
Customer had an old gas fire and an ugly mantelpiece what they wanted to get rid of. A Gas Safe engineer disconnected the old gas fire and when they removed it, they found a more or less square opening behind it. As a next step we purchased an old cast iron fireplace and I spent 2-3 hours to sand it back to bare metal. Once done, cleaned up and painted with heatproof metal paint. I also had to drill two new screw holes and counter sink them as the original hooks broke off. After this, the fireplace was ready to install.
The only problem was that the hearth didn’t look too nice, it was covered with some ugly and chipped tiles. So I get my breaker out, lifted all the old tiles, cleaned the surface and purchased some 12mm thick natural slate sheets. Cut them to size and laid them over the concrete base.
Once the hearth was set, I only had to fix the cast iron fireplace, oil the hearth and patch up some plastering for a smart looking finish. Once it was painted the customer was over the moon, as they finally managed to get rid of the 80’s style gasfire and bring back some original Victorian piece in their home. (Sorry but I lost all the work-in-progress photos from my laptop)
Screw it! 