Forests are often defined by their dominent species in a the mature or last climax succession. For example a if a woodland site is completely burned first smaller bushes will grow then successively larger trees until eventually you get a fairly stable group of plants. It sounds as if you might be in a Maple, Cherry Beech Appalachain type of forest. If you find a forestry text ( also may be called sylvics or sylviculture) you can find a list of what types of trees grow. Usually this will include the big trees and the understory trees. It has been several years since I studied this but I think you might find. Red Maple, Black Cherry, American Beech, Tulip Popler, Sugar Maple and Hemlock as some of you dominate species. Understory might include grey birch, yellow birch, witch hazel, sassafrass. The non-woody plants and much harder to define because they change more rapidly. As the trees grow the shade conditions change and plants that grew well before no longer do. If an area loses its trees by wind or fire wildflowers and other plants which have not been there for years suddenly appear because there is more light. The seeds have been in the soil all the time waiting for the right conditions to grow, this is called the seed bank.

db3512 - I have just recently (last 12 months) finished removing my fireplace. It was a double sided version of yours. 6 feet wide and 5 feet thick. It was not an easy task! First, this is a best guess. The brick from about the top of the flue on up the ceiling will likely be backed by framing and a header; no drywall. Below that it will likely be part of the firebox structure. You could conceivably remove it with a lot of work and mess. A 5-7lb sledge works best to just splinter the brick. Get the one with a wedge shaped end. It breaks the brick better. The brick breaks easier than the mortar so don't waste your time trying to chip at the motar. Once the upper brick is out, the mortar generally comes out pretty easily. I would also wait until spring as your heat will go right out the new hole you have created. If you can, get into your attic and look down along the chimney to validate. I could see the entire back side of the brick walls down to the firebox. About widening your firebox, in short sure if you have enough money you can do anything. Not to be flip but if you want to enlarge your firebox, you are looking at tearing out your fireplace and rebuilding it. Again that assumes it is a real fireplace and not a brick façade of some sort. Good Luck!!

I guess your fireplace was custom built. From your description, it is not a prefab. If you recently purchased the house, you might want to consider having a certified chimney sweep clean it, unless you know that has been done recently. Besides, if the grouting is loose in some places, that might need to be fixed before you use it. And you can ask the chimney sweep to comment on your issue about the glass door installation.

Westond,I'm not trying to be rude when i suggest you reconsider doing this yourself. The point I want to make is that you must have some degree of judgement on what you are looking at while performing a task such as this (largly due to the enormous collective weight of all that brick). At minium one should have have played with legos and dominoes rather than vidio games as a kid to know that the intire fireplace will fall on you if you remove a few of the wrong bricks before removing others from above. The pics are interesting and you have a nice place but I don't need pictures to tell you the fireplace is not holding your house up. Look at your own pics (better still,the house) and it's obiovus the brick in last pic is only one brick deep. I realize the little "soldiers" at top in last pic might appear to be holding the ceiling/floor up but they are there to fill a gap and do not support a thing. There are things that should never be attempted without a basic understanding because you can't get it off the net despite what some believe. Think of it like this,with mortor falling out as you say yours has,the brick would shift and alow house to fall if house was supported by brick in fireplace. Removing the fireplace is a grunt job,hire some experienced grunts and spend your time doing what you do to earn a living or just go fishing. Fixing the hole after brick are gone require's even more construction skill so be prepared to hire a finish carpenter.