Those of you who read Mister Anchovy’s a while back may recall that I wrote about Tuffy and I deciding to get a woodstove. This was back last fall. It turned out that the outfit we were going to buy it from were hopeless at actually selling us one. It required somebody coming out to assess how we would set up the chimney and they just couldn’t get their act together. We used the opportunity to rethink what we wanted. We explored the stove world much more thoroughly and even looked at some of the swanky sleek Euro-designs out there.

Meanwhile, we had our chimney rebuilt – the exposed part above the roof – because the brickwork was in very rough shape.  I asked the chimney guy to have a look at the big room we were thinking about for the woodstove and offer some advice. He immediately saw what I failed to realize, that the existing chimney that serviced the old fireplace that is now covered over in the living room, shares a wall with the room we were going to use for the woodstove.  It turns out that we can access this chimney and simply rebuild the liner (well, not us…the chimney guy) and install the woodstove safely for a fraction of the cost.

We finally decided on a stove after looking at pretty much everything available in small woodstoves, and settled on a Jotul cast iron stove in ivory enamel.

The next job was to install a fireproof floor area and a heat shield. The floor is stone tiles on cement board. The heat shield is the same material but floated an inch off the wall. We got that done last month.

Finally, yesterday, the chimney guy came in and cut through the masonry into the existing chimney. The stove gets installed today. We had some seasoned mixed hardwood delivered the other day. I’ll post some pictures later.