Exciting Things ~Part I

Yes! Very exciting things, that I have been meaning to post about for the past month!!

Life has been crazy........but in a good way;)

Anyway.....

......first things first!

You all probably remember our lovely-closed-off-thus-non-operational-fireplace, right?

Well, early one morning last month, I had it stripped of all ornament, moved everything out of the room that I could, and covered everything else that I couldn't with sheets.

Shortly afterwards, a very kind man and his son-in-law came and began to open the chimney!

When they took off the boards that closed it off on the bottom end, they found themselves staring at jumbled bricks. My Knight was very worried that the chimney may have started to collapse. However, it was discovered (after they had removed five five-gallon bucket loads of bricks) that when whomever had cut the chimney off at the top and roofed over it, they had simply thrown all the bricks down inside the chimney itself! Nice.)

One of the men joked that Santa Claus really could fit down this chimney.......it is that big!

Pretty dirty work.......

.....especially when they had to bust through the fire brick, and found they had to remove about three five-gallon buckets worth of soot!

But how we do love our stove!!

We have been whiling away these frigid days in our cozy living room, and at least one child seems to always be sitting in front of it reading a book, or playing with matchbox cars.

I grew up with a wood burning stove, and so it is just the perfect finishing touch to our old farm house, in my mind! At least one of the chimneys is getting some use! It just didn't seem right before!

So, there you are for now.

More exciting things to follow....

...eventually:)