Part 1 of this article (link) covered the 3 D’s (Discovery, Disappointment and Demolition) of our project to replace a gas fireplace with a wood burning stove. Now it’s time for the 3 R’s: Redesign, Rebuild and Relaxation.
I ended the previous installment with a hearth half covered in flagstone, bare studs on the exterior wall and part of the ceiling exposed right down to the ceiling joists and insulation. My wife and I threw around a lot of ideas as to how we might rebuild this area with the least amount of effort but would still look good. The end of Part 1 contained an image mock-up I composed of several different pictures showing the final idea.
Our last home had several large walls finished in stained knotty pine, a look and style we liked a lot. We wanted some sort of stone work behind the wood stove to act as a thermal mass to absorb some of the heat coming off the stove while protecting the woods studs and Sheetrock behind. I most certainly did not want to try and patch the 2’ x 8’ area of the ceiling with drywall and then attempt to match the texture and paint color. You would think an eggshell white is an eggshell white – until you try to match it and find out otherwise. Continue reading Taking a Pass on Gas – Wood Preferred – Part Two→
On occasion Mrs. Cog accuses me of being a curmudgeon. And on more than a few occasions she is absolutely correct. I wear my cynicism on my sleeve, my face, my chest, everywhere in fact. No wonder we aren't invited to very many social events.
This morning we decided to visit the big city to do some specialty shopping, which when you live on a sparsely populated mountain means any place with more than 30 people per square mile. Our destination was to the outskirts of Virginia Tech, about 90 minutes north of the homestead. Continue reading The Latest Sign of the Coming Apocalypse→
We recently bought a 22 year old house that had a massive rock gas fireplace. Not only was it useless for producing heat (being mostly decorative) it burned a fossil fuel controlled by a public utility. We much prefer a real fire, not to mention we have years of standing firewood on our property.
While a real wood fireplace/stove was on our prerequisite list for our new home, this house had pretty much everything else. Since the existing fireplace was very large and constructed of solid moss rock, we assumed it must have been a real fireplace at one time and later converted to a gas fired insert by a previous owner. Continue reading Taking a Pass on Gas – Wood Preferred→
