Hearth and Home

I have had various work crews in and out of my house this week. We knew when we bought the house there would be several things we needed to do and a few things we wanted to do. We saved our pennies and looked around trying to be frugal these past 6 months. The sale of the townhouse allowed us to replenish our nest egg we dipped into to buy the house and has allowed us to make the larger improvement. This house is solidly built. It is not drafty like many old houses yet in the winter this house is cold. The furnace is new and burns fuel oil. This past winter, from January 25th to April we used 450 gallons of fuel oil and 2 quarter ton loads of firewood to heat the downstairs with. The upstairs is heated by an electric heat pump. The house was warm. The electric bill was never more then $175/month. Which I think was okay. We have had higher bills at the townhouse. The kitchen at the back of the house is completely separated from the rest of the house and requires its own source of heat. We have a wood stove that we heat with, and boy does it heat. After a few hours it will run you out of there. So here's the thing. I don't mind carrying in firewood. Colby and I brought in the majority of the firewood we used. It was really good exercise. However an open fireplace is not energy efficient and this winter I am pregnant. I don't think in the dead of January snow I will be able to haul in 5 or 6 loads of wood a day. So I began researching fireplace inserts with blowers to make the use of the fireplace and the wood as efficient as possible. Based on my research we purchased a Quadra Fire 4100i wood burning insert. It is solid cast iron and gauranteed to last for the next few decades. There is only one dealer within a 150 mile radius of us so we had to order it from a place in Northern Virginia and go pick it up. It has been sitting on the back of the truck in the barn for a couple weeks. It is so heavy we could not get off the truck. We knew this before we even purchased it. This model of insert is efficient. When fully loaded with the capacity it is built for the wood will burn 10 - 12 hours! I opted for the black cast iron accent pieces. We do not need the gold bling-bling look. We ordered it back in June and got it for several hundred dollars less than the MSRP. I did say frugal :-) When we bought the house we required the former owners to have several inspections done and to have the fireplace and the wood stove cleaned and inspected. On the day of closing we were given the receipt for the work. The living room fireplace was cleaned and the receipt had written on it "in good working condition." We used this fireplace this past winter. This week I had a chimney sweep come and clean both the fireplace and the woodstove, inspect the flues and install chimney caps. When he climbed up on the roof and looked into the large chimney he said there had been several fires in the chimney in the past years and the liners where cracked and broken and we couldn't use the fireplace until it was repaired. WTF?? Talking to a great many other companies it is a general concensus that either the inspection before closing was a complete and total lie or lightening hit the fireplace chimney -most likely while we were on vacation. We had a problem with birds getting into the wood stove chimney in the kitchen. When they started cleaning it out they got half of a 5 gallon bucket of birds out of that thing. I told Steven we had more than one bird in there. He said this year was the absolute worst he had ever seen. Nearly every chimney they cleaned had birds in it. So while Susie has been battling bats I was battling black birds and robins. So now we have to add $3000 to the budget and have the chimney repaired because otherwise the house could burn down. People money does not grow on trees! I have sucked it up, scheduled the work, but I am angry as hell. I do not believe lightening hit our house. I believe the company that inspected the chimney lied. The day the initial inspection took place it was snowing and ice was on the ground. The top of the house was covered in a sheet of ice and snow. I don't think the man went up on the roof. My house has a hipped roof, he would have slid right off. There is no recourse for inspections gone wrong. Take this as a lesson. Check out the person inspecting any part of a house you are considering buying. If they pass an inspection on a part of the house and later that same area fails to pass inspection there is no warranty or insurance to repair the damage. It comes out of your pocket and no one elses. The work being done to the chimney has a written lifetime warranty. I am taking that piece of paper and putting it in the safe deposit box -it is now like gold to me. This morning I am waiting on the electrician. We are having the upstairs outlets changed from the old 2 prong outlets to 3 prong outlets, gfci's in the bathroom, 8 ceiling fans hung, hanging lights and pot lights put in the kitchen, outdoor outlets added to the front porch and a flood light added at the back door. I have had boxes piled in my living room and my dining room for 2 weeks waiting to be installed. I am excited about this work today! You might ask, "Why isn't Steven hanging the fans and changing the outlets?" That would be a good question and a great Do-It-Yourself project. However, we have to have EVERYTHING rewired to do this. My house is wired in many areas with the old knob and post ceramic elements and fabric covered wiring. Cool huh? The first electricity in these parts was around 1920. That is when my house was first wired. The new work can only be done by a licensed and bonded electrician. No frugal way out on this one.