Like everyone else on the East Coast, we woke up to a frosty winter day today. We got a couple of inches of snow, and it's really freaking cold outside. This is a day to stay home, make some coffee and sit by the fire. Instead, of course, we both diligently bundled up and headed into work. [bitterly.]
our awkward fireplace
First up, we weren't even sure that the fireplace worked. It seems like an unusual size, and didn't have the telltale signs of being used by our predecessor. We called a local chimney guy to come take a look, and give it a cleaning if necessary. We were both hoping he would give us the all-clear, but instead he discovered that the chimney was completely falling apart.
Note all the mortar that has fallen out and the bricks that are just sitting loosely on top of each other.
View down the flue- these things are supposed to be connected but have gotten separated from each other-- ie- it's not supposed to look like that.
The mortar was falling off in chunks, and the bricks were wiggling loose. Because the sections of the flue have separated, heat and gas coming up from the furnace could escape into the house - creating potentially a huge safety issue. Because there wasn't a cap, water could get in creating water damage, and squirrels and birds could crawl in too. So not only could we not light a fire, we needed to rebuild the chimney asap. [bummer].
We reached out to three companies for quotes. While we had their attention, we also asked what they thought of the unusual size and shape of the fireplace. It's really tall and wide, but very shallow. Each of them thought it would have drafting problems and had various suggestions to fix it- from adding a big hood to lifting the firebox floor by a foot. [ca ching, ca ching- thank you older house with expensive hidden problems that we didn't know about before.]
I did some googling, and have come to the conclusion that we actually have a "Rumford" fireplace, specifically built to be taller and shallower than standard fireplaces to reflect more heat into the room. They were really popular in the late 1700s, so I guess it's not surprising that our current chimney men weren't familiar with the model. Assuming that this fireplace is purposeful, and we don't need to do anything to it, we moved forward with the chimney restoration project.
I have no pics of this because we hired it out completely. [Sidenote- every DIYer should know their limits. My line is drawn just before hauling bricks up a two-story ladder.] It took two days. They took the chimney all the way apart, added the two liners, and then rebuilt.
Then, we did some clicking on amazon and bought important components to get this sucker going. They sell extra shallow wood-log holder things that would fit our unusually shallow fireplace. We got a screen too, just in case, and the pokey things.
Joyfully, everything arrived today. So we ran out for some firewood, crossed our fingers, and lit 'er up.
Voila! She works!
cats are into it.
Ok- so everything seems ok! We have a functional fireplace. It appears to draft just fine. So now we can move on to the project we wanted to do in the first place, de-uglifying.
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