Fireplace

So, we’ve never been too fond of the insert on our fireplace – especially the gold around the doors. The other day I noticed it was a little loose (that’s happened before, and it can just be popped back into place), but instead I decided to remove it all together. (I kept the insert, in case we ever want to put it back on in the future). But I much prefer the look of open fireplaces, so I took the insert out to the garage, then started to clean out lots of the ash that was left from the previous homeowners – we only had one fire last fall and haven’t used the fireplace since then. When we used the fireplace that time, we noticed some large metal panels in the back of the fireplace, and we didn’t know what they were there for. So I put on some gloves and pulled those out to find that they were some home-made contraption consisting of what looks like a couple of old metal shelves with several weights (like the kind you’d use in weight lifting) attached to the back of the shelves with lots of heavy duty wire. The only reason we could figure for anyone putting that stuff in the fireplace is that in the very back of the fireplace there is a little hatch that can be used to sweep ashes down a shoot that empties in a little compartment in the basement – although it doesn’t really seem any easier to clean it out in the basement than to clean it out of the fireplace itself. Anyways, I guess someone didn’t want to deal with ashes getting near that little hatch, so they tried to block it off. I got those into a large trash can and pulled it out to the garage – it was almost too heavy for me to move it by myself. Then I started scrubbing the entire inside of the fireplace – I knew it the black marks wouldn’t come off, but I wanted it to be clean enough that if a little kid touched the fireplace it wouldn’t turn them black. I also took the grate out to the back yard and scrubbed it down. I’m pleased with how it looks now, it actually seems to open up the living room a bit and make a rather long and skinny room look a little wider. Now we just need to do some work on the mantle piece at some point in the future, and that room will look great.