It used to be popular to display vases, pictures or small sculptures on these shelves. Might be able to have a mason saw these off?

Nice space. Not a great fan of the built-ins on each side of the fireplace but otherwise like the look of the rooms.

Would consider ignoring the little stone shelves at least on the fireplace side of the chimney since you don't know whether or not cutting them off could well make what's left even more obvious.

If you do try cutting them off, do that on only the one back side first and see what it looks like before making a decision on the other, fireplace, side.

Keeping the high vent over the built ins in mind -- that part of the wall likely would need to stay intact -- do seriously consider removing the built ins on both sides of the fireplaces (unless duct , etc. prevents it) so you can either have a walk around fireplace or rebuild the wall on each side of the chimney to create a look in each room that you prefer.

it was common back in the 60's to have those.

before worrying about the fireplace, I'd do something w/the two-tone built ins, the wall paneling, and that horrendous ceiling fan.

for now, you can remove that fireplace screen, since it's really dated.

If you like, you can always paint the stone on the fireplace, and maybe do a nice wood mantle.

once painted, itcould look similar to this.

Yes the built-ins will be painted. The ceiling fan will be replaced with a nice light fixture, and the paneling is going away.

Also popcorn ceiling is hopefully going...have to get an asbestos test first!

I kind of like the built-ins for storage- we have a lot of books. Is a walk around fireplace even something desirable? I wouldnt know how to lay it out? Plus we need that room probably to be an office

besides painting, you could remove it.

redo itw/something else, drywall, whatever,

or, you could cover most of it like they've done here

for that weird wall area, I'd just take it down and do the entire wall in shelving or a desk and shelving