Fireplace installation in Midland TX - a hearth built for the way you use it

Most people who call about a fireplace have a bare wall they've stared at for years, or an old firebox they've never trusted enough to light. If the chimney you've got is cracked or missing mortar, chimney repair usually comes before anything new goes in. The price moves mostly with what you're building and what's already there, because a full fireplace and chimney is a lot more brick and labor than an insert in a sound firebox. The schedule depends on whether the city wants a permit, when your plumber can run gas if you go gas, and how fast your unit or stone shows up. Your estimate comes in writing with what's included spelled out, so you can see where the money goes.

I start by asking how you plan to use it, because most fireplaces turn out to be more about comfort and looks than heating the house, and that answer settles a lot of other choices. Then I look at what's there now, a masonry firebox, a metal factory-built unit or plain drywall, and we plan the size, the face and where the chimney runs. On a new build our crew pours the footing, lays up the firebox in firebrick, the dense brick made to take the heat, builds the chimney, sets the hearth and finishes the face in brick or stone. We take our time on the joints, because mortar mixed in a hurry looks fine right up until it doesn't. We build the masonry and leave the gas line to a licensed plumber, since that's their trade and their license.

A fireplace is rarely just a fireplace. A lot of people want the whole wall faced, and stone veneer installation gives you that look without building a wall two feet thick. For a fireplace out on the patio, the core usually goes up as concrete block walls, laid straight and then faced to match the house.

The City of Midland issues residential building permits. Its list names new construction, additions, remodeling, repairs and detached buildings but doesn't name fireplace installation, so whether your job needs one isn't settled until you ask the city. When a job does call for a permit, we handle the paperwork with the city and wait for it before we start. Work can't begin until the permit's issued, and after that it has to start within 180 days and can't sit idle more than 180 days in a row, or the permit expires and you apply all over again. That's one more reason I don't start a chimney and wander off.

If you go gas, Midland's residential code requires an approved shutoff valve above ground, outside at the building entrance, on every new or replaced gas line, so your plumber plans for it before we close anything up. A lot of the houses we see around here are brick on a slab, so a new fireplace usually gets its own footing and brick picked to blend with what's there. We're based in Midland and do the same work in Odessa, Big Spring and other cities around Midland.