May 20- Thank you treats & 1st night in our new old home!

Happy Friday May 20, 2016!

This was our first night sleeping in our new old home!! 

Hip hip hooooooray!

The day dawned with a "thank you so
much for your help" surprise party for family & friends

I went to 2 of my favorite bakeries to pick up
treats for everyone. Yum.

The lovely Kearney, Platt & Kramer ladies posing in front of
our freshly installed fireplace mantle.

Tara brought the Kearney kiddos for a Friday morning visit-
made the morning feel very festive!

Literally a perfect night for a fire in our new fireplace! 

Cheers to burning the extra wood leftover
from the renovation

Fireplace is in!

Yay! The fireplace was installed on Friday! Chris & I may have jumped the gun in purchasing our firebox back in August, 2015 given the installation date of March 18, 2016, but whatever. We were excited!

Before - the firebox hung out on the
living room floor for a couple weeks!

The chimney is now lined with metal pipe and capped outside. The drywallers fit a piece to cover the area around the firebox. Now we just need the surround & mantle; though those are still a ways off I'm afraid.

After - it looks happy & snug!

A wood burning fireplace was on our list of needs (not just wants) so we knew we would add one when we bought our house.

Ta da! All set! Well, except for the
mantle & surround....

It is exciting to have it in place & not hanging out on the living room floor or in our storage unit for that matter!

Given that we don't yet live in the house,
the best part about our shiny new
chimney cap? It will no longer rain in
our house when it rains outside :)

Update Friday March 25, 2016:

Yippee! The gas line is hooked up & tested for our 1st fire!
Don't worry - the gas is only there to help us start a fire; we will
burn wood once we live in the house.

Update Saturday April 2, 2016:
Another too funny not to add.....

Hm. What's missing? The drywallers did
their job a bit too well! The gas control is
already hidden behind the wall.....
so much for our idea of drinking wine in
lawn chairs in front of a fire this weekend!

Fireplace Planning

Chris would make a lovely mantle decoration :)

Everyone has a different list of "must haves" for their dream home. Thankfully, Chris' list & my list were quite similar!Both of us really wanted a wood burning fireplace in our forever home, neither of our condos had one & we found ourselves wishing they did.

Surprisingly, it is not too difficult to add a wood burning fireplace to a home, particularly when you will be ripping apart so much of it in the first place!

We misjudged where the fireplace will be on this wall (it will be closer to the dining room; not centered on the living room wall. Its location is determined by the chimney location!), but we taped out the size of fireplace/mantle/hearth to get an idea of its impact on our living room.

Hello there future fireplace!

This planning has us dreaming of when we'll move in (hopefully February, 2016). It will likely be cold & snowy & PERFECT for fires in our future fireplace!

Ordering the "box" where the wood actually burns.

What are some of your "must haves" in your current or future home? We are always picking our family/friends' brains to make sure we haven't missed anything to include in our house plans!