Today I want to show you the progress photos for replacing our wood burning fireplace with an electric fireplace. This was a great project and we love how I looks in our living room.
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Wood Burning Fireplace Converted to an Electric Fireplace
While we hired a contractor to do most of the project, I wanted to show the process photos for replacing the wood burning stove with an electric fireplace.
We opted to do this because I have asthma and our wood burning stove was going to be really expensive to fix. This was a much more affordable way to do it, although the additional cost of the contractor added into this equation as well.
But I love the new look and I think this is going to be a great addition to our living room. This room will eventually become a dining room when we do our full addition.
I purchased the PuraFlame Bernice 50 Inch Smart Linear Electric Fireplace which was HIGHLY rated and reviewed and was recommended in a building group so I knew it wasn’t just fluff reviews: You can check out the current price and model information here: https://amzn.to/3DWisGV
Demo
To save time and money, I opted to demo some of this myself. I removed the fireplace trim and the mantle.
I had to cut away at any of the caulking and try to remove some of that first. Then I used a pry bar to pull the trim away from the fireplace and wall.
This requires being very careful because if you damage the drywall, you will need to do some drywall repairs.
We were going to need to do those anyways so it wasn’t a big deal. I mostly tried to avoid doing any damage that would be annoying to live with until the contractors were finished.
We sold the mantle to someone else to use which was nice vs. just trashing it.
The first thing the contractors did was remove the surrounding pieces for the fireplace that I didn’t get to. They added insulation and plywood in front in order to block off the original wood fireplace.
You want to make sure that you have a cap on your fireplace so that nothing can get inside there… Otherwise, you’re going to have an issue if the squirrel or bird gets stuck in your fireplace and it’s blocked off like this. I’m still a little worried as I know they can blow off in bad weather and our chimney is so high we’d never know.
An electrician came and did a lot of electrical work to prepare for this. The stove already likely had some electrical stuff going on in there though.
They framed out the area for the fireplace using 2x4s. This bumps out the wall a little bit in that area which looks really nice.
They used spray foam to fill in any gaps, particularly gaps under the windows where the original builder forgot to add insulation.
Once this was done our space was much, much warmer.
After framing it out and adding the electrical wiring, they created a shiplap effect, and the wood was primed and painted white.
They built a small custom mantle. I haven’t decided what color to paint it so it’s still the original raw wood.
I placed all of the stones and such for the fireplace and got it running. It looks awesome and you can run it without heat which is nice during the summer when you want the effect but not the warmth.
But it can also be run with a heater which is nice as well.
You can see the area here that they left us a wire to pull through any wiring that we would like to bring in. This will allow us to hook up electronics in the future if needed.
And that’s all there is to it.
Other posts about our living room renovation:
- Added a Sliding Glass Door to the Future Deck
- Removing the Half Wall
- Replacing the 2 Windows with a Sliding Glass Door
- Raising the Living Room Floor
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