I'm of the all or nothing belief. If it goes, you have to fill in the floor in two places. If only part comes out, you may have to replace more than a couple places of the floor.
I'd be real nervous about taking part of it out. You could probably do the demolition and enjoy it. just remember, it also goes through the roof which has its own set of problems. ----- Original Message ----- From: Dan Rossi To: Blind Handyman List Sent: Monday, August 02, 2010 10:13 PM Subject: [BlindHandyMan] Supporting a chimney We have begun interviewing contractors to remodel our kitchen. One issue we have been working around is that there is a chimney running from the basement, up through the kitchen, and on up through the second floor and roof, obviously. The hot water tank that had been venting through that chimney has been moved, so nothing is actually using the chimney any more. Our plan is to expose the brick of the chimney, it has been plastered over possibly since it was built, 80 years ago. However, the first contractor we spoke to asked if we had considered removing that part of the chimney to just get it out of the way. I told him that I had thought of it, but didn't think it would be possible to remove the middle of a chimney. I mean, I assume those things are a tad bit heavy. This contractor implied that he could remove the middle of the chimney and still support the upper part from the ceiling joists. Does this sound realistic? -- Blue skies. Dan Rossi Carnegie Mellon University. E-Mail: d...@andrew.cmu.edu Tel: (412) 268-9081 [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]