Fireplace shopping

Now that we know that our fireplaces are inoperable in their current state, and that we need new inserts for sure (and possibly a new chimney), we decided to go shopping for gas inserts.  We went to two fireplace stores and looked at these vintage gas fireplaces because they most closely resemble the 1890s fireplaces we have.

It seemed like a good idea except in person I hated these fireplaces.  When standing in front of them, they looked like toy fireplaces. The other part that bothered me were the fake coals or fake logs that were inside of them. The actual part of the fireplace where the flame is at is about 12" wide, so that meant the imitation logs were only about 8" wide.  Needless to say, I thought it definitely looked like a fake fireplace.

So we started thinking, since we are already tearing out the surround in order to rebuild some of the chimney, why don't we just expand the opening to fit a larger fireplace. Yes, we'd be losing the vintage feel of it, however, I think we'd get more use out of a larger fireplace like the one below.