Choices are not my friend. I don’t like a lot of options, I’ll drive myself crazy. That’s why choices motivated strictly by the budget are the easiest for me to make. I know that sounds like a buzzkill but when you don’t have enough money to do something the way you want to you eliminate the heinous “should I or shouldn’t I?” conversation. You can’t, so you’ve got to move on and get resourceful. Case in point, the fireplace below in Bear’s Den, Mammoth.
From afar this may look like it could work, like it has charm. And it does, but not enough. On closer look you can see how filthy it is and how some of the hearthstones are broken. Seven in fact. I can tell you that number off the top of my head because I was able to scrounge up five from the garage and my father-in-law’s so it stung I couldn’t find two more. A Better Fireplace had a close enough match in stock so we decided to replace the bench and just clean the rest of it. Bummer Number 1.
Bummer Number 2 comes when we have to replace this wood-burning buck stove with a pellet stove. In order to bring the fireplace up to code to burn fire, I would have had to rip out all the insides and repair it. That would cost about four times as much as this lovely pellet stove below. I will miss the crackle of a real wood fire but I will enjoy spending that money somewhere else, like for accessories!
Left to right, Chairish, Target, Chairish, Riverbend Home, Overstock, Quadra Fire CB 1200