Good Morning :) :confused: I have a question I hope can be answered. We recently purchased a home with a gas fireplace in the basement. It has a beautiful white finish with logs and I am looking forward to displaying pictures on the mantel. The dilemma is that the pipe leading outside sticks out the middle of the mantel and curves upward to an ugly metal plate and the gas supply line lead to the outside wall. Can this be enclosed with a fire-retardant material to make the fireplace look more 'finished'? Thank you in advance for any help with this. :)

Seeing as my second winter is coming around in my very old home, I'm thinking I better get this done soon! My house was built in the early 1800's and still has the original chimney. Before the days of central heat it was used as a fireplace, obviously, but it now is used as the exhaust for the heater. Since the chimney runs through the house, I worry that some of the air makes its way through the morter. I KNOW there isn't an insert in the chimney now. It just relies on the brick and morter to escape the air. What I'm thinking is that I can just add a metal insert (sorta like ductwork?) from the roof and connect it to the oil furnace that already has a metal duct going into the chimney. I'm sorta just guessing that there is a product out there that does this and hopefully it is semiflexible? It would be pretty difficult to insert a solid metal duct that is 20 ft high from the roof! Any advise on this or am I crazy!?!