Expert: James Ball - 1/14/2010

Question
We own a ranch home built in the 1970's.  It has a fireplace surrounded with stone that runs from the ceiling to the hearth and the hearth runs across the entire room and is stone as well.  My wife is tired of the stone and we are thinking of removing it.  The floor joists in the crawlspace are tripled up under the fireplace, obviously to support the weight of the stone.  The chimney itself is on the outside of the house (bricked).  What are we likely to find when if we take the stone off - cinder block forming a base for the stone??

Answer
Hello Eric, I would have a local Certified Chimney Sweep www.csia.org, (there you can look up by zip code to find one near you) take a first hand look at what you have they should be able to help to check the condition of the fireplace before and after. Not sure what you will find, but in most cases the stone is just decorative and should come right off (protect the floor) you might do better to hire a local general contractor to do that work.
hope this helped