04-02-2022, 04:23 PM
I'll try to keep this short, I know I can be too 'windy' sometimes.
We bought our place 17 years ago. It's a really nice place in a great location and we love it here. At the time our principal motivation was looking for a right-sized piece of land for our livestock operation. We wound up buying two pieces of land, one of which has the house situated on it. We're not a particularly big operation, more of a custom producer raising Belted Galloway cattle for beef.
After living here for about a year I had discovered something I didn't like about the house. In the corner of the living room was a gas fired fireplace (propane, because we're on propane way out here in the sticks). It was a really nice built-in fireplace, but I just didn't like it. I've never been a fan of something which imitates something else (linoleum that looks like wood, formica or tile that looks like stone, etc.). For some reason these imposters just bug me, and they eat at me. Furthermore, because of the way the fireplace was designed, it really didn't work that well. By about year #3 I just turned the gas off to it completely and sealed up the vent stack from critters, and there it sat. I've always had a fireplace in everyplace I've ever lived, and not having one drove me crazy. Back then, I'd made my mind up that someday we'd fix that problem, but there were lots of challenges.
One of the principal challenges of a fireplace in this house was location, and the location of the gas fireplace was really the only place one could go, but "Murphy" rules my world so nothing is ever easy. Worse, I had a "Honey-Do" list so long I figured I'd never see daylight. No small list either! Things like wholesale remodel of the kitchen (my wife is a Culinary educated "Chef") so you can imagine what that remodel entailed (i.e. taking a completely dysfunctional kitchen and transforming it into a Chef-worthy near commercial kitchen. That project alone caused me to think (on more than one occasion) I might have been better off bulldozing the entire joint and just starting over from a clean sheet of paper! And, that was just the kitchen. Before that was a very long list of other projects like equipment, barns, livestock and too many other things to count. But I digress.
This year (or more correctly, the end of last year) I basically put my foot down and said "Enough! I've wanted just one thing ever since we bought this place, just one thing; a right and proper fireplace! I've done everything everyone else wanted/needed for 16 years. And, not one more project is getting started until I get the fireplace that I wanted all along. Period!" And so, in early October 2021, it began.
As noted earlier, "Murphy" and his laws just rule my world. I've learned to never let myself even think about believing otherwise. If there's any possible way something can get fucked up, in the most unimaginably difficult way, I will find it in threes! I've worked in engineering and construction all my life, and all the projects leading up to this point we'd done ourselves. On this one project I had a secret weapon...I was going to hire a contractor, for the very first time, to complete my fireplace project. It was the classic "One throat to choke" strategy (and that throat, for once, was NOT going to be mine!).
Exterior walls had to be torn out, new walls built, stone and masonry work needed to be done and much more. Initially, we had a heck of a time even finding a contractor willing to do the work this far out, but we eventually managed to find a family owned business specializing in exactly this kind of thing. They said it wouldn't be complete before the end of the year (presumably to head off the tidal wave of customer's wanting their projects completed in time for the family to gather around the fire for Christmas). Okay. Then Murphy showed up.
It was one thing after another. The firebox manufacture's plant (in BC, CA.) burned down. Then they rebuilt and got flooded. Of course all of this happened "after" we'd purchased all the stuff from these guys. And then the quarry guys had problems. When they finally got their issues fixed they shipped our hearth stone to the stone guy. Our stone guy then broke the hearth stone trimming it. This, after months and months of waiting for one thing or other. This time though, the problems were all on the contractor and not on me. January ticked by, then February, then March.
To add insult to injury, in late December I blew out my left hip which will now require total replacement. Murphy, or Gawd, or the both of them conspiring together tried to throw everything they had at me. I was undeterred.
Last evening at exactly 3pm, April 1st, 2022, on "April Fools Day" (probably the biggest irony of all) I finally put match to wood and within minutes there was fire! At last, dancing flames and that familiar crackle and popping of dried oak set aflame. I sat in front of that fireplace, periodically stoking it, until after midnight enjoying every bit of it. The glow of the orange and blue flames, the sounds, and the smell, that wonderful smell that only a hardwood fire can provide.
We had fire...in our fireplace...at last!
We bought our place 17 years ago. It's a really nice place in a great location and we love it here. At the time our principal motivation was looking for a right-sized piece of land for our livestock operation. We wound up buying two pieces of land, one of which has the house situated on it. We're not a particularly big operation, more of a custom producer raising Belted Galloway cattle for beef.
After living here for about a year I had discovered something I didn't like about the house. In the corner of the living room was a gas fired fireplace (propane, because we're on propane way out here in the sticks). It was a really nice built-in fireplace, but I just didn't like it. I've never been a fan of something which imitates something else (linoleum that looks like wood, formica or tile that looks like stone, etc.). For some reason these imposters just bug me, and they eat at me. Furthermore, because of the way the fireplace was designed, it really didn't work that well. By about year #3 I just turned the gas off to it completely and sealed up the vent stack from critters, and there it sat. I've always had a fireplace in everyplace I've ever lived, and not having one drove me crazy. Back then, I'd made my mind up that someday we'd fix that problem, but there were lots of challenges.
One of the principal challenges of a fireplace in this house was location, and the location of the gas fireplace was really the only place one could go, but "Murphy" rules my world so nothing is ever easy. Worse, I had a "Honey-Do" list so long I figured I'd never see daylight. No small list either! Things like wholesale remodel of the kitchen (my wife is a Culinary educated "Chef") so you can imagine what that remodel entailed (i.e. taking a completely dysfunctional kitchen and transforming it into a Chef-worthy near commercial kitchen. That project alone caused me to think (on more than one occasion) I might have been better off bulldozing the entire joint and just starting over from a clean sheet of paper! And, that was just the kitchen. Before that was a very long list of other projects like equipment, barns, livestock and too many other things to count. But I digress.
This year (or more correctly, the end of last year) I basically put my foot down and said "Enough! I've wanted just one thing ever since we bought this place, just one thing; a right and proper fireplace! I've done everything everyone else wanted/needed for 16 years. And, not one more project is getting started until I get the fireplace that I wanted all along. Period!" And so, in early October 2021, it began.
As noted earlier, "Murphy" and his laws just rule my world. I've learned to never let myself even think about believing otherwise. If there's any possible way something can get fucked up, in the most unimaginably difficult way, I will find it in threes! I've worked in engineering and construction all my life, and all the projects leading up to this point we'd done ourselves. On this one project I had a secret weapon...I was going to hire a contractor, for the very first time, to complete my fireplace project. It was the classic "One throat to choke" strategy (and that throat, for once, was NOT going to be mine!).
Exterior walls had to be torn out, new walls built, stone and masonry work needed to be done and much more. Initially, we had a heck of a time even finding a contractor willing to do the work this far out, but we eventually managed to find a family owned business specializing in exactly this kind of thing. They said it wouldn't be complete before the end of the year (presumably to head off the tidal wave of customer's wanting their projects completed in time for the family to gather around the fire for Christmas). Okay. Then Murphy showed up.
It was one thing after another. The firebox manufacture's plant (in BC, CA.) burned down. Then they rebuilt and got flooded. Of course all of this happened "after" we'd purchased all the stuff from these guys. And then the quarry guys had problems. When they finally got their issues fixed they shipped our hearth stone to the stone guy. Our stone guy then broke the hearth stone trimming it. This, after months and months of waiting for one thing or other. This time though, the problems were all on the contractor and not on me. January ticked by, then February, then March.
To add insult to injury, in late December I blew out my left hip which will now require total replacement. Murphy, or Gawd, or the both of them conspiring together tried to throw everything they had at me. I was undeterred.
Last evening at exactly 3pm, April 1st, 2022, on "April Fools Day" (probably the biggest irony of all) I finally put match to wood and within minutes there was fire! At last, dancing flames and that familiar crackle and popping of dried oak set aflame. I sat in front of that fireplace, periodically stoking it, until after midnight enjoying every bit of it. The glow of the orange and blue flames, the sounds, and the smell, that wonderful smell that only a hardwood fire can provide.
We had fire...in our fireplace...at last!
