I am considering rebuilding the face of my fireplace in the basement. The face is painted brick and it is not square and frankly poorly built. I want to have a mason tear out the existing brick and build a new brick face. I have never used the fireplace before.

The mason that came to provide a quote noticed that the damper was installed backwards so it opens backwards. He also noticed the bottom edge of the face was not far enough below the damper (he said it needs to be at least 8 inches clearance, mine is more like 3.5 inches). Long story short, I tested the firplace by burning some newspaper and as the mason suspected the smoke belowed out of the opening and into the room.

Finally my questions. Will the damper being backwards casue any problems? Correcting the clearance issue is easy enough, replaceing the damper requires significanly more demo, materials and labor.

I don't have any answer to the question of a "backwards damper".

But one option might be to remove it completely and replace it with a chimney top damper.

Those mount on top of the chimney had are spring operated to open the. Then there is a cable that runs down the chimney to close them.