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Turn, turn, turn

The chimney sweep, part of the regular end-of-Summer ritual. Completely necessary, as we depend on fire for most of our heat.

And this year, we had the added joy of an inglenook dripping honey. We have bees in the attic — we’ve had bees in the attic for years and years — but this year they gave us a gift. A gooey, black, soot-coated sticky, pooling gift. We had to ask the sweep if there was anything especially flammable about it (there’s not).

Our guy is modern and up to date. We get a text message when it’s time to get swept. Sadly, though, he doesn’t look a bit like Dick van Dyke.

Let the evening fires commence!

Comments


Comment from DurnedYankee
Time: September 18, 2018, 6:49 pm

Good job he wasn’t mucking about during the clean-athon!

Looks like the fireback has seen some alternations over the years. One of those fire places you could practically sit in wha? (oh no, the Newfie ancestry showed up…)


Comment from ExpressoBold
Time: September 18, 2018, 10:08 pm

An image worth saving! …and I did!
~
Stoat Weasel 400 yo fireplace & sweep


Comment from p2
Time: September 19, 2018, 1:18 am

good lord…you could roast a volkswagen in that thing!!

i have mine done by a sweep in spring (ok…late june)….then give it a look and a brush myself in mid sept to clear the critters out. hard to get a sweep in during the fall coz everyone else is scramblin to get theirs done. now to rent a couple kids to rake the leaves this week & im ready for snow next week….


Comment from BJM
Time: September 19, 2018, 1:23 am

Isn’t it amazing that sweeps can clean the danged dirty things and leave zero mess.

Is this the former kitchen Inglenook or was Stoat Cottage posh enough to have a sitting room with it’s own fireplace?

I love when there’s that little nip in the evening and mornings…not quite cold enough for a fire, but soon. I had to dig my cozy fleece-lined clogs out of the back of the closet this morning.


Comment from Bob
Time: September 19, 2018, 2:02 am

Consider yourself lucky.
Friend of mine had a bunch of dead, rotted pigeons in his chimney. Stank like only rotten pigeons can.


Comment from Deborah HH
Time: September 19, 2018, 2:09 am

Off topic, but I thought Stoaty would like this article.

How studying chicken butts cracked the inner workings of our immune system

https://www.popsci.com/chickens-bursa-immune-award


Comment from BJM
Time: September 19, 2018, 4:38 am

@Deborah

Ha! I just read that…is there anything chikkens can’t do?


Comment from Uncle Badger
Time: September 19, 2018, 8:57 am

That picture really doesn’t do justice to the inglenook (mea cupla – I snagged it on my phone). It’s one of the house’s best features.

Regarding critters and beasties in da house, when we moved in and had the chimney swept for the first time, half the height and depth of that entire space was filled by a rooks’ nest which the sweep had to clear.

Later today I have a ton of coal being delivered. Two loads of logs will follow in a week or so.

We’re slowly working through the checklist!


Comment from facebook video downloader
Time: September 19, 2018, 9:12 am

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Comment from Durnedyankee
Time: September 19, 2018, 12:48 pm

Extraordinary substance satisfaction achieved!

Meanwhile back in Kent…

Inglenook. It’s not just for drinking.

https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=inglenook+fireplaces&id=64BD2DABEFE88616252EEACFA5B351489DA11EA7&FORM=IQFRBA

Nook – chiefly Scotland : a right-angled corner

An inglenook (Modern Scots ingleneuk), or chimney corner, is a recess that adjoins a fireplace. The word comes from ingle, meaning “fireplace” in Old English (from Old Scots or Irish aingeal, “angel” or euphemistically “fire”), and nook.

Do they sell Inglenook in Merry Old?


Comment from Deborah HH
Time: September 19, 2018, 2:19 pm

I like fireplace people, but I’m a thermostat-on-the-wall person.


Comment from DurnedYankee
Time: September 19, 2018, 3:34 pm

Wait…did you say commence fire?

😛


Comment from Steve Skubinna
Time: September 19, 2018, 5:12 pm

When I built my house I installed a wood stove. A friend built his a few years later and went for a full sized fireplace. He was quite smug about the superiority of his fireplace for a while.

Eventually it occurred to him that I burned about as much wood in a week as he did in one evening, and to greater effect. Years later he installed a wood stove, same model as mine, in his library at the other end of the house from the fireplace. He was tickled that with the door to the library open, a small fire can keep that end of the house, which includes the master bedroom, comfortable on cold nights.

Though I expect that a squinty gazillion year old cottage (old measurement) is drafty enough that the difference between a modern wood stove and a full fireplace with a boy turning an ox on a spit is negligible.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: September 19, 2018, 7:41 pm

It was an open fire when we moved in (and for hundreds of years prior, naturally). I would love to have left it that way, but it was an absolute energy sink. This fireplace has a bread oven off to the side (see the window behind the fork to his right), but there’s some debate where the kitchen proper was. This fire clearly heated the entire house.


Comment from Timbotoo
Time: September 20, 2018, 2:45 am

What, no butt crack? Is this a posed photo?


Comment from Little Black Sambo
Time: September 20, 2018, 7:56 pm

I remember a beekeeper’s house catching fire. It was his store of honey that made the fire particularly fierce. So be a bit careful.

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