Chimneys in Rooms

Now that the brickie has finished building our brick party walls we are eager to get him to break our fireplaces open in the two bedroom and the living room. I only managed to carve a small hole about an inch deep in this wall. Andy knew exactly what to expect and how to go about it. He also commented that my wood chisel wasn't going to get me much bigger of a hole. He pops the fire into the hole before we see it open. It needs proper fitting, but he will do that when the other two fires are restored. The bricks you see beside the fire are from a hole that had to be made for the chimney running from the dining room that had a blockage in it. The chimneys run side by side in the same chimney breast, completely separated by an internal brick wall. Our bedroom gets knocked through. We managed to get our living room fire to this state, but couldn't chip out any more than that. It was pure concrete between the bricks. Andy takes it back to the original brick opening. Thankfully it has a lintel so we don't have to put one in. Despite the plans to cover it with an original cast iron fire, it has a charm all on its own. The dining room fire has been chimney swept and the sides will be rendered before we get the wood burning fire installed in a few days. The chimney has our 4 room chimneys along with 4 from the next door house (our chimneys are back to back against the party wall). If they are capped they are non working. You can see the middle two of ours are not capped (this is the dining room and living room). Nice. And you can't even see the thick layer of soot that has descended throughout the house. Now that the fires are all opened up we will get them all swept. Our chimney sweep said he didn't think they had ever been cleaned based on the amount of soot he got from the dining room chimney. It is all coming along nicely!