A Romantic Valentine's Fireplace

After twenty-five years, Steve and I have reached the point where we now decide to buy a mutual gift together to celebrate our holidays. Much like at Christmas, when we purchased the tankless water heater, which is something we both wanted. That was our Christmas present to ourselves.

Well, the next holiday coming up is Valentine's Day. There was something we had wanted for the house, and Steve suggested that we consider it our Valentine's Day present to each other! It's not very sexy, but it COULD be.....

In our living room we have a big brick fireplace. We have long ago blocked off the chimney and made sure that it is no longer accessible from outside.We did not want to go through the expense of relining an entire chimney flue for something that we really weren't even going to use.

In the fireplace opening, a while back we placed a natural gas vent-free stand-alone fireplace unit from Charmglow. With the pretty screen in front of it, you really don't even see what is in the fireplace opening. Just the beautiful flames flickering against the curly cues on the brown mesh screen. It's very soothing and relaxing, plus it takes the chill out on a cold morning. It's supplements the central heating and is a comforting and yet practical way while adding ambience to the room.  Here is the pretty screen:

The only problem with the older natural gas fireplace that we had installed is that it was "manual". We had to reach down inside, and reach underneath the back edge to push the igniter or to control the temperature knob settings. We had to reach down below underneath for a switch for the blower.  And reaching way down underneath was achieved by laying on the floor to turn on and off the gas at the main valve. Although it worked, it wasn't all that fun to operate.

Now, to those "purists" to say the only fire is a real wood fire, I beg to differ. We get enough wood fires when we're camping. Keep in mind, our experiences in the past have led us to enjoy a gas log fireplace instead of woodburning type.

I grew up in a home that was heated solely by wood in a big old wood stove. That meant all of us children helping to haul wood, chop wood, stack wood, and keep the fire going at home, around the clock.  This was in the dead of winter in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  Stoking the fire every few hours was a necessity, not a pleasure. It was not fun. Plus cleaning out the wood stove, bringing out the ashes, dumping them in the back garden, and then cleaning up the mess is a whole other process that needed to be done.  Cautious use and dangers of a chimney fire were always present in the back of the mind.

After I grew up, and had a home of my own, I had a wood burning fireplace. It was not the main source of heat, but it was nice to have on cold winter nights.  Again it meant hauling firewood, starting fires, keeping it going and not being able to close off the damper until the fire went out. That meant sucking the room heat back OUT of the room and have it go up the chimney before the fire was completely out. That was not fun. And did I mention cleaning up the ashes?  There was always the issue of bugs coming in the house with the firewood. Having to clean up the soot every once in a while because smoke would puff back into the room when it was windy. I would have soot on the bricks, the wall, the mantle, etc. Not fun.

When we built our log house out on the river, again we had a wood burning fireplace. Then again the same stuff of hauling in wood, maintaining the fire and cleaning it up afterwards. Steve did most of that, and it was not fun.

After 50+ years of this, I think our days of messing with the real woodburning log fireplaces are done. 

When we moved to the house in Chilton, we had a faux electric fireplace. We installed a natural gas log fireplace kit into the opening.  From then on we really appreciated the ease of having natural gas logs instead of a real wood burning fireplace! 

When we bought the house here in Oconto, we knew that there was was a real wood burning fireplace but the chimney was of questionable quality. Sooo blocking it off and putting in a gas log unit made the most sense for us. Even if it wasn't the easiest to use, we were glad to have something in the opening.  We also have a nice gas log unit down in the She Shed that we use during fall, winter and spring to heat the space.  Although they have electric blowers to help move the heat, both of the fireplaces can operate without any electrical power if need be. Perfect solution in a power outage due to storm or other mishap, our pipes won't freeze and we wouldn't have to leave our home.

Steve's Valentine gift suggestion was to replace it with another similar fireplace, but this time with a remote control! That's just what we did. We ordered it from our local Tractor Supply Company that had it shipped directly to the store a couple miles away from us. We did a curbside pickup where they carted it right out the door to our waiting vehicle.

So here we are, posing with our new Valentine's Day gift to each other. We are finally feeling about 1/2 to 3/4 of the way better from last week's sickness that we could finally get up some energy and decided to start the installation.  Not too bad for a couple of sickos?

Here is the older fireplace fully operating with pretty flames flickering. Once the installation of the new one is done, we will sell the old one on Marketplace. Somebody else will be able to use it. Our decorative screen is removed to take a good pic to sell it.

Yesterday, Steve opened up the box and started assembling the new fireplace. He was mounting the legs on and we were reading through the directions. Imagine that, a man reading directions? The old one is pulled forward out of the fireplace opening, so we could start disassembling that one at the same time.

He worked on it for a while and then we decided to take a break. He had all the tools assembled and ready to go. We vacuumed out the fireplace opening before installing the new one. Then we kind of ran out of energy. So it sat like this in the living room overnight. Nobody says we have to rush rush rush and get it done in one day. Although, when we were both feeling better, that's exactly what we would have done.

Bright and early this morning, Steve was feeling better, so we decided to tackle the rest of the installation. Step-by-step--- everything was correctly switched over, the new blower unit installed, and the settings all correctly adjusted for the space.

One of the best features on this new unit, which is made by ProCom instead of Charmglow, is that the controls are right up front underneath a little flap door. This is similar to the one that we have down in the she shed. It makes the controls much more accessible than the other one that we had.

Now it was time

 to put the pretty fireplace screen 

back in front of the unit. 

Once this is on, all I want is some nice flickering flames and warmth and heat coming into the room. Plus now having a remote control is great to handle it all.  P.S. I got the screen from Wayfair last year.

We'll look at that. It fits perfectly in the same spot it did before and you really don't notice anything has changed at all in the room. But we know now with a flick of the remote, we can be enjoying the flames and heat and warmth of the new fireplace, just much easier than before.  

No wood to haul.

No bugs.

 No ashes.

No soot. 

We toasted to our new gift to each other,

a few days early for Valentines.

~~~~~~~~~

Since I had so much energy today and I've been recouping from being ill, I decided to get out my grandmother's big old Singer sewing machine and set it up on the desk in the office. Of my five sewing machines, this is the only one that will sew through a triple folded hem on my hand-woven rugs.

It was nice to sit at the desk with the beautiful blooms over my shoulder from the amaryllis plant. I'm now enjoying four large stalks full of blooms and more to come. One website I read said the blooms can last from 30 to 60 days! 

I fold over the hems twice and clip them into place so I am sewing through three layers of woven header material. It's nice at the desk to have all this space to move the rug around while I sew on the hems. I used to do this on the dining room table and had to move everything out of the way.  Since I repurposed these two end tables into a desk for the office, it's made a nice area to set up the sewing machine for the occasional times I need to hem a rug or two or three...

This machine from 1942 just goes and goes and goes

a real work horse.

The weather outside has warmed up nicely and we were almost to 40 degrees today. 40 and February in Wisconsin is a pretty nice day. 

For supper we were actually grilling outside because it's so nice and warm. Of course, we ate inside. Our appetites are coming back and we enjoyed some freshly grilled hamburgers tonight.

We don't need to be fancy,

just comfortable.