staying warm
The cold is starting to settle in around here. While we did have a new furnace installed, Superman likes to ensure he saves money wherever we can, especially with all the renovations and trying to get a farm up and running. I can’t argue with good sense. We have some woods on the property, so using the standing dead trees to heat is a great way to save money, keep the woods clean, and stay warm.
The house has a fireplace in what we’ll call the den, though the Amish did not use it. They had dressers sitting in front of it when we walked through the property for our showings, so we were unsure of the state of it. The owner did tell me it would need a new front, but I wasn’t quite sure what she meant by that. When we moved in, the front looked fine to me. Sadly, the brick had been painted, but there are things that could be done to make it look better. Maybe that’s what she meant?
Because the floors were covered with plywood that went right up to the opening of the firebox, we knew we needed to take that out in order to have any kind of fire, assuming it was safe otherwise. That’s when we discovered what she meant by “front.” The hearth had been taken up in order to put the plywood down level. Before we decided what to do with that area, we called a local chimney company to come inspect it. We didn’t get all the good news we’d hoped for, but there was some good news.
Our previous home had two wood burning fireplaces. One had a grate heater that blew warm air out into the room once the grate reached a certain temperature. It was my favorite because it raised the room temperature a few degrees without compromising the beauty and coziness of a wood fire. The other, more effective one, had an insert that blew hot air into the room with much higher heat and efficiency. The latter was [obviously] Superman’s favorite.
We were hoping to be able to heat our very drafty, very old home using an insert. Because of the shape of the chimney, though, that was not going to be an option for us without a costly restructuring of the inside of the chimney. The good news is we had options, which means it is usable! Phew! Our choices were: (1) a pellet stove, which we quickly declined because the point of using the fireplace was to save money and pellets are pretty expensive, (2) use it as a regular fireplace, which we also turned down because that really would be aesthetic only with little to no heat benefit, or (3) a grate heater like we had at our old house, this is the option we chose because it had the best cost effectiveness combined with an acceptable heat output.
Before we could utilize that option though, we had to put a fireproof material in front of the fireplace as a hearth in case any spark might come out of the fireplace and land there, potentially starting a house fire. So, we measured our space and I took Speedy to a local supply store that had a choose your own, pay by weight section and we chose some gorgeous stone to put down.
Using our measurements, we put together a rough pattern and grabbed a few extra pieces just in case.
Because we are hoping to make the overall theme of the house have a colonial cabin feel, the different thicknesses and rough surface of the stones are ideal. They offer imperfections in a warm, inviting way that showcases the feel of simpler times and a job done by hand.
Got our stones home…let’s hope we can arrange them in our space without too much difficulty!
Not too bad! Luckily, we can appreciate a good puzzle. Now to make the mortar and get them set in permanently…
The other nice thing about the “rough” look we are hoping to achieve is that we weren’t too particular about larger or smaller gaps between stones. And we didn’t have to worry about breaking too many of them to fill in the space perfectly. It really added to the authenticity in the end. For the ones we did have to split, we used an air hammer and an air compressor which worked fairly well.
After we were happy with our arrangement, we mixed up mortar and lifted up small sections of stone at a time to fix into the mortar without messing up our layout. Then, we used a pointing tool to get mortar into the smaller gaps and smooth it all out. The last step was to use a wet sponge to clean the extra mortar residue off the stones.
We have some sweeping to do, but all that’s left is to let it dry.
Hooray! Now we can have a nice warm fire, and hopefully keep ourselves from freezing! We did have to track down some glass doors and a grate heater, but that wasn’t too bad thanks to the internet. We are spending our school days huddled around the fireplace now, and it is just so inviting! Some day we will do the surround to match; but for now, it is functional and we are warm, and that’s all we really needed. We are grateful. God has provided for us richly, yet again.
*Who saw the wood floor in the den?! Not only is it beautiful and exciting, but also budget friendly! I’ll show you more of it later, but we likely won’t get around to refinishing until next winter.
