Fireplace Fritz

Today I waited for the repairman to fix our fireplace - he was supposed to be here last Thursday at 9:00 am. Apparently, he came by at 8:30 and no one answered. Well, our room is in the back of the house and we were getting ready for the day with showers and the such. We must not have heard him because we did not know he would be arriving so early. I never thought I would complain that a repairman showed up early! Today he was supposed to show up at 2:00 pm. He came at 4:00 pm. Oh well, guess that's what I get for complaining about early arrivals!

Troublesome fireplace - bedroom view


Fireplace on bathroom side

In the end, nothing is wrong with the fireplace, just the vent leading into it. The reason it keeps going out is because the fire runs out of oxygen. The repairmen (it took two to figure it out) could not do anything and will be contacting the company that makes the fireplace as well as our architect/builder since they might have to "take the wall out" to repair the air exchange vent. Argh...we did not even want a fireplace but the architect insisted saying it would help our home value (not really helping value in this economy). We finally compromised and put a two-sided one in our master bedroom/bathroom. The living room area does not really have a place for a fireplace without obstructing our view and that's why we built the house where we did. This fireplace is turning out to be more trouble that it's "value".

This is what T Rex and I did to keep busy while the fireplace was NOT repaired...

We both did vacuuming...


And took a few "peek-a-boo" breaks

In the end the T Rex time totally made up for the fireplace hassel!