While procrastinating working on the house the other day, I read where 1870's House opened and cleaned out their fireplace. I thought..... "that surround looks familiar"... So I looked over at our fireplace and suuure nufff. They are the same!! cool.. They were lucky. They only had leaves, sand, and soot in theirs. We had BIRD BONES !! EEEEEEHHHHH! along with soot, more soot,leaves,and probably a little rat poop mixed in. Unfortunately, we were missing the coal grate and the cover for ours. My Aunt and I did a basement search wishing there were tucked away in a dark dirty corner. No such luck. We did find enough coal to build a good fire, or several. The top picture is 1870's house and the bottom pic is ThirteenEleven.
In ThirteenEleven's pic that is little bit of the truckloads of wallpaper removed from the house. Since then I came up with a "quick fix" to keep the drafts (birds too) from swooping down and blowing more of that greasy black soot everywhere. I filled the cavity of the chimney with spray foam. "YIKES !" the purist renovators are saying... Well.... Spray foam, when dry, is easy to remove and who knows when and if we will ever get these old fireplaces working again even with gas "coal looking" inserts.
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Fireplace Surrounds.
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3 comments:
Ok, the foam is a fabulous idea.
*runs to look for local source*
What does the writing say on the bricks inside the fireplace? It says Stevens on ours. The letter "N" is backwards on the ones in our fireplace, but since I posted about it I found one out in the yard that has the letter "N" turned the right way so I guess the ones in our fireplace were just a messed up batch.
I think it says OFHC Kimberly? But I am not sure. They are thick with paint, so the letters are very distorted. That is funny about the backwards N. I bet the mason, who made the bricks, couldn't read at the time.
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