You may want to discuss this with a local contractor or gas fireplace insert company to find out your best options. One of the companies we use is Heat & Glo, you can certainly ask their advice! Good luck with your project!

Thank you!

There are so many options it's hard to narrow anything down for someone as indecisive as me, but it seems like a whole set vs. buying a separate log set and doors is mostly personal preference.

This won't be the best news.

If you are concerned about heat efficiency and would like to able to use your fireplace a lot, then a vented insert is the way to go, and I wouldn't recommend anything less than about $3500, and it will be closer to $5k or $6k (installed) for a good one. It will include the burner, logs, venting system and a surround to seal off the old fireplace.

Here's another bit of bad news, Technically, if your chimney is not considered safe to burn wood, there are no gas logs that you can install, vented or unvented. Even unvented logs have to go into an A) approved ventless enclosure or B) working solid fuel (wood) burning fireplace.

There are some contractors that will ignore the legal requirement, but I wouldn't.

You can install an unvented insert into the existing fireplace and meet all of the requirements without repairing your chimney. The insert would eliminate the need for glass doors, since the surround will seal off the fireplace opening. The budget would be more like $1500 -$2500 for an unvented insert. White Mountain Hearth has some nice ones: Unvented inserts

Of course, good custom fireplace doors will easily be $700, and our more popular unvented logs are about $1000, so your budget was probably a little low regardless.

It's not that you can't do the project for your budget, but you shouldn't.