Oh yeah, the fireplaces

Growing up, we ALWAYS had a fire. I guess that's not so unusual in Canada and Michigan, but when my parents moved to Texas they insisted on having them. While I never lived there, my brother claims that my dad would bust out with the "Texas kindling" (i.e. the gas starter) as soon as the temperature dropped below 50. When they moved from the 6th most under-valued real estate market to one that was among the most over-valued, the fireplace was something that had to be compromised. The whole time they were in their townhouse they either talked about moving to a fireplace or installing one. Mom was still trying to figure out how to get one in this November. While this isn't EXACTLY my number one choice on how to get one, I had to do this for mom.

Our house has four fireplaces.  The only one that came with a working chimney was the one in the basement with our furnace.  Of the other three, there's one in each of our "parlors" and one in our bedroom.   Our front parlor is our family/living room.  The back parlor is the play room.  Clearly the chimney to be opened was the one in the living room. But Odin thought that we should just open them both and have a fireplace AND a woodstove.  I'm game, but we needed to have a fireplace.

Our existing fireplace had a ventless gas insert.  When we moved in, we called the gas company to hook it up and they told us that it wasn't to code and we would need some ugly shield.  Bleh.

So, for four and a half years we lived with this.

I guess it's pretty hard to see, what with the whale in front of it, but basically it had fake logs and red paint.

NOW we have this -

Awesome, eh?  My mom would be so proud.  We also put the woodstove in the playroom, but because of our newest project (built-in bookshelves) that room is a disaster, so I can't get photos.

I have more to say about this, but I want to keep moving forward.