We heat our house with a woodburning insert in our upstairs fireplace. It’s worked great for us the past few years but there are a few problems with our little system. For one, upstairs is always 10 degrees warmer than downstairs in the winter. Secondly we have a series of fans set up around the house to try and direct hot air down to the kids’ bedrooms. And we have to leave their doors open in winter if we don’t want kidsicles. Another downside is that Andy has to haul firewood from the back of our property, through the downstairs and then all the way upstairs. Not so much fun. We had half the livingroom gated off so Ben didn’t get near the woodstove. He was really good about not touching (we even had the rule during the summer) but it’s just something you block off when you have kids anyway. Finally, wood stoves are dirty! Everything in the livingroom would get a layer of dust every single time we burned.

So we decided we’d look into moving the insert downstairs. We could tie it directly into the furnace that’s behind the fireplace, providing even heat in the house because the furnace would now pump the hot air around. No frozen children! Andy would only have to bring firewood in through the back door instead of up two flights of stairs. No gates everywhere because the kids don’t travel downstairs unsupervised. And I don’t care if it gets dirty because it’s not really a living space (yet).

Andy looked into it more and found out the size of the firebox was right and the flue was a straight shot down the chimney, it’d work out perfectly. Why we didn’t have the insert put down there in the first place, who knows. You live and learn. So Andy started to disassemble the old stuff downstairs and move the woodstove down there. We’re not all finished yet, Andy still needs a friend to come over and help him shove the new liner down the chimney and hook up a few other things (technical term)…but I’m excited! I have to think of something cute to do with the soon to be decorative fireplace upstairs. Old books, candles, mirrors? Who am I kidding, anything I put in there will be ransacked by Cassidy in a few months when she starts moving…