Warmed by a unqiued design challenge!
One can enjoy a wood fire worthily only when he warms his thoughts by it as well as his hands and feet.
~Odell Shepherd
It arrived last weekend. It’s heavy, black, intricately patterned and required a lot of huffing & puffing to install it. It was met with great resistance on my behalf! It is messy, time consuming and isn’t necessarily fitting into my overall design scheme of the family room.
It is a wood burning stove, something my Prince has wanted since we built our house 11 years ago. He loves the dry heat and stoking the fire. I’ll even venture to say he enjoys splitting the logs, a very manly thing to do! It was easy for me to line up the excuses when the kids were young……..’Sweetheart, what if the kids touch the stove?’ or …….’Love, the thermostat is in that room the rest of the house will be freezing!’ He has even had my Dad lecturing me about adding the stove, cost savings etc.
So the time has finally come that the kids are older and three heating zones have been installed in the house, and I’m out of excuses. As all good wives do, I did my best to embrace my husbands latest addition to our home, it not too bad. Something I won’t admit to my Prince or my Dad. There is the savings to be had, one cord of wood equals 150 gallons of oil on average, a difference of approximately $175.00. Wonder what I can purchase with the newly found cash? The stove does show the flames in the door so I haven’t lost my love of seeing the roaring fire. Still most importantly the addition has opened up a new design challenge! Design challenges are something I live for!
We discovered quite quickly with the location of the stove in the family room cooking away at 75 degrees, the dining room dropped to a chilly 60 degrees. Basically the family room is a ‘dead end’ and air can’t circulate out of the room. That’s where my design challenge was created!
I needed to come up with a creative, reasonably priced way to add a second opening to the room. The room (pictured below) has three exterior walls and one interior wall. Sounds easy enough, add another cased opening……problem…the only remaining wall backs up to the staircase to the second floor. I toyed with the idea of having the landing also open to the family room. This of course was quickly ruled out, by the cost and doubly when I realized my future built-ins wouldn’t be able to happen.
So I started flipping through design books, looking for inspiration and came up empty handed. I riffled through past issues of This Old House, as always I found great projects & homes with great technical guidance but still not the perfect solution. The stove needed a fresh load of wood, so aside I set my books and magazines and headed out to the porch for a load. As I stood on the porch I could see inside my husband’s workshop………that’s where my inspiration was found. I loaded up the stove and headed to the shop. I picked up moulding pieces, iron brackets and planks of antique chestnut ……… creative juices started flowing! As I moved the chestnut pieces I saw a stack of old shutters and there was my solution!
I found a petite shutter, it was perfect in every way the paint was crazed, it was weather beaten and it was a perfect size. I paired the shutter with the antique chestnut and began designing a window for the stairwell wall. This would be perfect! The shutter would give me the ability to control sound moving up the stair case. The antique chestnut would be a beautiful sill and with the combinations of mouldings I could create a unique surround for the ‘window’. Design Challenge solved!
Now, my Prince is also my carpenter for hire. So the status today is the hole is cut, opening framed and sheetrock repaired. This week I hope the mouldings go up, walls painted and shutter installed……..I promise to post an update!
It’s 20 degrees outside tonight, brutally cold……but not in the here. Ashley has taken up residency in front of the stove and is knitting a scarf. Joe & Joey are curled up watching abc Family and I typing away here on my laptop. Besides the cost savings and warmth there is another bonus to the wood stove ………….. we’re all together in the family room. Best bonus ever!
