Anyone who knows me or has read my blog in the last year or so knows how much I love my stove. I also chronicled a bit of our learning curve with the coal burning stove last year.
There were some definite down sides to the layout of our house and the lack of heat circulation creating a tropical climate in the living room and upstairs while the kitchen and downstairs bedrooms alternated between moderate and walk-in refrigerators. It also bugged me that we had to use up propane to turn on my kitchen stove when I had a heat source already going (the design of our coal stove didn't allow things set on top to get hot enough to boil water or cook anything). So we were paying for propane to cook, paying a lot for coal to heat, and it seemed kind of riciculous since one 'appliance' should be able to do both while I looked out at our orchard tree trimmings laying on the ground and some very large but dead trees across our acreage.
So we came up with a solution...
True to form (my India friends will recognize and appreciate this), we had a friend confirm where the weight-bearing columns were, and then got out the sawz-all and took out half the wall dividing the kitchen and living room. Circulation problem partially solved, we looked at slightly re-routing the chimney to the kitchen side instead of the living room side. It's fortunate we did since it turns out our chimney was in awful shape; we can only chalk it up to God looking out for us that our house didn't burn down last year. The part that was enclosed was a terra cotta thimble and was cracked and broken with twigs and birds' nests packed in tight... So in addition to redesigning our house layout, we installed a brand new chimney.
We bought our neighbor's old wood cook stove and got it moved in.
And since this is an old farm house, where it is recognized that the heart of the house is the kitchen (and so is a sizable room), I even had space to put a couch in next to it, so I can cozy up while I'm stoking the fire in the mornings...
So now we're heating with old oak cut down from our property, heating our house while (sometimes) cooking our meals. It makes my heart happy.
There were some definite down sides to the layout of our house and the lack of heat circulation creating a tropical climate in the living room and upstairs while the kitchen and downstairs bedrooms alternated between moderate and walk-in refrigerators. It also bugged me that we had to use up propane to turn on my kitchen stove when I had a heat source already going (the design of our coal stove didn't allow things set on top to get hot enough to boil water or cook anything). So we were paying for propane to cook, paying a lot for coal to heat, and it seemed kind of riciculous since one 'appliance' should be able to do both while I looked out at our orchard tree trimmings laying on the ground and some very large but dead trees across our acreage.So we came up with a solution...
True to form (my India friends will recognize and appreciate this), we had a friend confirm where the weight-bearing columns were, and then got out the sawz-all and took out half the wall dividing the kitchen and living room. Circulation problem partially solved, we looked at slightly re-routing the chimney to the kitchen side instead of the living room side. It's fortunate we did since it turns out our chimney was in awful shape; we can only chalk it up to God looking out for us that our house didn't burn down last year. The part that was enclosed was a terra cotta thimble and was cracked and broken with twigs and birds' nests packed in tight... So in addition to redesigning our house layout, we installed a brand new chimney.
We bought our neighbor's old wood cook stove and got it moved in.
So now we're heating with old oak cut down from our property, heating our house while (sometimes) cooking our meals. It makes my heart happy.
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