We are on final inspection for our house (recently added on a second story). The inspector came back with a couple of items including the fireplace. Basically he stated that we need to add an additional gas line for the fireplace (because of the increase in btu from other parts of the house) and that the chimney needs to be at least 2 feet higher than the second story addition. If we do not do these things, the inspector said we would need to permanently close off the fireplace.

We will request quotes to fix these problems, but wanted to know how easy would it be to just "close" or "seal-off" the fireplace? Also, what is the correct procedure for closing or sealing off a fireplace and if you know how much it would cost or could it be a DIY. (We are little handy - we remodeled our entire kitchen ourselves including demolition and put in a deck ourservles as well.)

I would not mind sealing it off and placing one of those electric fireplace mantel setups at all. We have a little baby right now who will beginning walking in the next few months and I think it would be wiser to just close off (the fireplace sits on the floor so anyone can just walk up to it and injure themselves if the fire is going).