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.

Our Projects so far.

The projects we've completed up to this point are a few imperative ones.  The first was we replaced the siding on the gable ends with Hardyplank.  We went up against a tough Landmarks Commission, but we were granted our permit.  Thankfully, I was concerned I would be impaled by dropping pieces of vinyl everytime I parked the mini-van.


The next project, also imperative from a water seeping aspect was the paint job.  We had wanted to paint the house Benjamin Moore's Hawthorne Yellow from the day we closed.  We finally did, and with GREAT results.  I could not have been more pleased.

The other project that I completed that I'd been longing to do since we moved in was replace our kitchen knobs.  Wow!!  What a difference.  The cabinets are what I would call almond and the knobs were white.  White on almond!  I swear it was a migraine headache.  I didn't realize it, but the lack of contrast between the knobs, but the different whites were just a visual migraine.


As you can see we also replaced the dishwasher. This is actually our FOURTH dishwasher since we bought the place. "Uncle Chuck" replaced our first with a reconditioned dishwasher, so when that went, we were like "Hey, let's get 'Uncle Chuck' to get us one of those reconditioned one." Dude, the man spent the Fourth of July replacing our washing machine smelling of whacky tabaccky. We're not going with "Uncle Chuck's" reconditioned appliances anymore. Isn't our new dishwasher pretty? Isn't it great that it works? Yay Sears.

Our House

We bought our house almost 5 years ago with grand intentions. It's a 19th C. Federal/Greek Revival house in Harpers Ferry, WV. 4 1/2 years and two kids later (we got here with 2, now we have 4) we've repaired some siding and painted the house from red to yellow. The latter happened just months ago. Now, as we enter the second half of our first decade here, we are going for the interior. Apart from a couple of quick paint jobs and new knobs, it's pretty much what it was. No new light fixtures, no central air, no new flooring, same-old cabinets and ugly flooring in the kitchen. 4 1/2 years and two kids later, we're ready to make our house into OUR home.

Thanks Mom.