I Love Lamp: Wood Stove

While Waldo is still a bit perturbed that we brought fire inside, Steven and I are SO HAPPY to have finally gotten our wood stove installed! The previous owners took theirs with them which left a rather obvious hole in the hearth of the living room. One that I tried, unsuccessfully, to fill with tables and books and christmas trees--

(Don't mind our matching vintage sweaters-- xmas gifts from my Mom...!)

And since it's winter it's wood stove season, so the place where we got it couldn't install it for nearly two, very cold months! To make matters more complicated we had to built a second internal chimney because our oil heat was connected to the brick chimney so we weren't legally allowed to just plug the wood stove into that chimney too.

Oh, home ownership.

It took the guys ALL day, measuring, sawing, crawling through the attic, clambering on the roof. And let me add that it as a -10 degrees day. Total champions!

Steven lit the first fire that night:

We really wanted to have a huge, raging one to heat up the place but they had specifically told us that you're supposed to have a few small ones first to temper the paint. They also warned us that a slightly black smoke will come off the stove during the first big burn and that that is normal. I FREAKED OUT anyway when our whole first floor filled with smoke and a terrible, acrid smell. To calm me down, Steven called them to triple check that what we were experiencing was normal. They swore up and down it was.

And now we're cooking. Literally! Last night we roasted sweet potatoes in foil in the grill portion of the stove and they were sooooo yummy. They reminded me of the ones that we used to get in the streets of Beijing after school.

And now I've got to runoff to the barn to build a wood storage contraption of sorts with Steven!

(What is I Love Lamp? This is I Love Lamp.)