I dearly love a wood fire. But after heating our house with wood for nine years, back in the eighties, we were cured of ever actually having a wood fireplace again. Still miss it sometimes, but I don't miss the ashes, bark, bugs, smoke etc. Guess I'm getting old.

thank you , yes know you can by fire place paint, however the front of the fire place is very ugly, so we were looking for something to actually cover this ......any suggestions , we were thinking of having mild steel laser cut in a pattern to cover the main body of the fireplace , then paint this together with the surround in a paint , has anyone done this?

If you get good dry wood and for the right price I'd go with wood everytime. It burns hot, dry and clean. However not everyone has the ability to get the wood, nor has time to stack, bring it inside, etc.. I'd have a wood fire for the look and feel but just use it occasionally if regular wood supply is not possible. Electric reverse cycle is very efficient now and even better when used with solar power. Gas was the way to go for heating up until a few years ago now its back to electric again.... Keep the open fire and have electric reverse cycle as well! I'd keep the chimney but add some corbel's to it. Maybe the blue feature brick like on the window sills. You could make the chimney a feature rather than trying to do the opposite.

I think one of your key considerations will be what to do with the flue / chimney. My personal thought is that you should look to punch it through the wall and keep clean lines inside, but not sure if that is feasible for you. Otherwise you might want to make a feature out of the chimney enclosure - use it to break up the length of the room. The path you choose here will inform the remaining design decisions. You have to keep in mind that an off-the-shelf fireplace unit is not going to have heaps of flexibility in terms of altering its design to suit your space. If the unit you are looking at is designed with a vertical flue and you want to punch through the wall instead, you are going to need specialist advice to make sure that the gas certification for the fireplace unit is not compromised by your alterations - or chose a different unit that suits your needs.