To cut a long and frustrating story short, i removed the wood burner last night so we could remove the “Chuckle brothers” tiling and tidy up the fireplace.

We’d been told the chimney had been lined which if it has, its not vanished into thin air so thats another job i have to sort.

Upon closer inspection the brick arch is a little precarious with loose bricks and loose mortar joints. So whats the best way of making it a little more secure?

Is it a case of remove it along with a couple of course of bricks above and then build a former to hold the arch, rebuilt that and infill the bricks above it?
Its only single skin brick, so not too much too it (hopefully)

Any other suggestions?

Before:
[url=https://flic.kr/p/SYYQ8s]Fireplace[/url] by Dave Aspinall, on Flickr

After:

[url=https://flic.kr/p/TdNJ8R]Fireplace[/url] by Dave Aspinall, on Flickr

Most of the weight will spread out down through the pillars, so the arch isn’t holding that much up, just a few courses directly above and they’ll be held in by friction / mortar.

You could chisel out some of the old mortar and pack new stuff in. You could brace it with Builder’s Band as well (looks ugly, but if you’re plastering over it, so what).

You could take out 3 courses, stick in a pre-stressed lintel (£10 from builder’s merchant) and then put back a decorative arch – but that’s a lot of work a bit of piece of mind.

footflaps, cheers for that. We plan to leave the arch exposed and plaster up to that point so we can cover over some of the banding.

I plan to take some of the plasterboard off to expose another couple of courses up to see what the quality of the brickwork there is.

I did wonder about drilling from underneath straigh up into the upper courses and inject resin and some bar so hold it all together.

In the photo the arch doesn’t look too shaky. How long has it been there?

One suggestion: before you re-plaster, be sure to cut the plaster right back to the corners of the breast and quite far above, so that you’re not patching around the opening. With thermal expansion and contraction it won’t be long before you’ve got a nice crack line all along the join. Guess how I know this?

By all means rake out and point up the arch – but structurally I’d leave it myself . .- If it was me I’d replaster over it – It’s not worthy of being considered a feature . .

Good points. We plan to put a “floating” oak beam across as a mantel piece so as you say, probably worth patching it up and plaster all over.

As for thermal expansion, so far thats not been an issue as the fire was so crap. I’m hoping new seals and a liner that won’t just suck air in from everywhere might make it a bit more efficient.