Curiousity killed the ...wall? (part 1)

Well. Sort of.
Last week I started stripping the mantle in the living room. I'd borrowed Ian's SpeedHeater (a fantastic device, highly recommend for paint removal.)
A few things I learned about SpeedHeatering:
1) it's better left to open-window season.
2) it's easy to singe the wood if you linger too long, or overlap areas you're treating. Count to 20, no more, no less.
3) The cat would snuggle with it if I left it where she could cozy up to it. Which would be bad, because she's flammable.
There's a ton of layers, most of them alligatoring. Mostly versions of whites, tans, browns, and the possibility of light green, but I have reason to believe that was actually wall color that was brushed over from the wall - I only found it along the wall edge.

White, white, tan, green!, brown, different tan, more white.

Over the weekend, I continued stripping it while passively watching mindless Marvel movies. Which brought us to this point:

A little singed on the right side, nothing a little sanding and a coat of Kilz won't fix.

The irony is that there some folks out there who'd pay good cash money for the mantle in just this condition. Rustic. Farmhouse. That's not really where I want to take this room, so it'll get a nice coat of paint later. I'm thinking cozy in this room.
Sunday Ian came over, and while discussing the mantle, we got curious about what exactly was under that faux brick board. One thing led to another... well. I'll tell the story in pictures.

Where we start.

The faux brick was both glued and wire nailed to this curious sheet of black metal.
Here we see Ian trying to extract the 3" wire nails. They were very thorough with the nails.

Under the metal, more metal! A tiny metal patch made out of the same pebbled textured metal as lining of the pantry closet,
over this delightful green painted crumbling plaster.

Under the metal patch was this pipe, a remnant of the original heat source for this room. Chances are very likely that a parlor stove once sat right in front of this mantel. Which makes sense, considering the molding all looks quite original, including where typically a fire box could have been, but there's nothing to indicate there ever was one.
At the back of the pipe, you can see where the cement block chimney now runs. This pipe never tire into this new chimney. It's the exhaust for the furnace now.
It's also hard to tell, but there's brick behind the plaster! That's very exciting! I would love to have an exposed brick face if I can't have a fireplace.

Sure, I get bricks. 6 of them. Just enough to create a fire-resistant ring around the stove exhaust pipe.
Which, sadly, makes sense.
Other than the bricks, there is cut lath, cut nails, horsehair plaster (that leads me to believe someone owned a red chestnut horse), and some interesting rough-cut, live edge wood bracing.

Where we ended that day, all cleaned up, plaster and lath bagged for garbage, braces and brick exposed.

Now, to decided what I want to do with the space. I have some ideas. It will incorporate tile and brick, I believe. I've investigated shallow bioethanol fireplaces, but they aren't quite shallow enough for this application. (They also look terribly modern.) Too bad.
Until then, I've propped the faux brick over the hole so that the cat doesn't get any wise ideas about exploring.
Until next time...