And it’s gorgeous!

Merry Christmas to us! This is the one thing we really wanted for the house, and it’s a whole lot cheaper (and cleaner) than plumbing the fireplace for natural gas. Besides which, natural gas fireplaces give me a headache if I sit too near. Carolyn’s very sensitive to wood smoke, so a real fire was out of the question. To top it off, there’s a bit of a compromise in our chimney, nothing that compromises its structural intgrity, just a flashing or something that needed fixing if we were going to use it as a wood fireplace. Considering I don’t do roof work, that fix would probably cost us more than our new insert! (We won’t even talk about the work of cleaning a real fireplace!) So, this was actually a relatively inexpensive answer to our need to spot-heat the living room in the winter and take care of a big dirty black spot (the fireplace) that dominates an entire wall.  Last winter, we had to heat the whole house to take the chill off the living room. Not now! We might well save the cost of it in just a couple of years…only time will tell.

I tried to get some pictures. Setting it on the table and taking a delayed picture worked like a charm. Thanks, Walt! I took one really long exposure to show the fixture, but in actual fact, at night, it doesn’t show at all.  Spent a lot of time this afternoon checking out various fireplace screen options, then it finally hit me: we don’t really need a fireplace screen!  I’m going to get a tension rod and make transparent, seasonal drapes to help disguise the fixure when it’s not in use. I’m thinking nifty, sparkly spider-webby stuff for Halloween, something with sparkly colors for Christmas… I’m sure I’ve got something downstairs that’ll work beautifully and take (knock on wood) half an hour to construct! Wheeee….

Anyway, for now, here’s the fire….