Although the majority of our house hails from the 1920’s, an addition was added in 1990’s by a previous owner – which included a wood burning fireplace. For years the fireplace provided a warm crackling glow to the our family room. Then … it was inundated by a flood or two.

During the second flood of 2007 our family room sustained a fair amount of damage and required some renovations. The floors in the picture above show the radiant heat coils that survived this flood event as did the fireplace – or so we thought.

It wasn’t until the subsequent flood event in 2011 that we realized the integrity of the fireplace had been compromised. Water is pretty sneaky in that sense, finding its way into any nook or crevice and quietly wreaking havoc. So during flood repairs resulting from Hurricane Irene a few years later, the entire fireplace had to be removed.

HIDDEN BENEFITS

I never really liked the original fireplace mantle. It was a bit busy and slightly ornate for my taste. I could have easily lived with it, but thanks to flood damage, now I wouldn’t have to! The entire fireplace had to be replaced: the firebox, the floor supports, the surround, and the mantle. Fresh start.

ANOTHER  BONUS

 In addition to the new fireplace installation where we now had the opportunity to assist in the design of the mantle (built by our carpenter crew) and choose the new surround (black slate), we also got to choose new floors. (Almost makes you wish you flooded, right?)

The mahogany floors being installed above replaced the previous floors that had been nicked up from years of our boys playing smash-up games with their cars and trucks and finding numerous other means to scratch them up.

A few years and a drastic house elevation later, we are preparing to put this said fireplace to work this winter. But just to play it safe and make sure that it survived the lift in tact, we had a chimney sweep come by to inspect and clean it – all the way to the roof.

CLEANING A PRE-FAB FIREPLACE

During the numerous renovation projects we’ve endured over the years, I’ve learned something new from every professional that has worked on our house. For example, here I found out that a pre-fab fireplace, such as the one we have, is very easy to clean and rarely has any problems compared to a stone chimney – there are no ledges or crevices for soot to build up. Chim chim cher- oo!