I like . . .

listening to Metallica's Justice album while ripping out plaster and lathe and then scooping them into construction trash bags and trash barrels respectively. There is so much of my brain taken up by useless heavy metal lyrics imprinted forever in my early teens.

The chimney/fireplace guy will be by this morning; I really hope that we will be able to use it in some capacity (to build fires) or another (for a woodstove). If not *shrugs* I guess we'll get one of those big fireplace candelabra things.

I'm off tonight - we'll be heading to meet up with the netgoths for coffee in Davis Square :)

Yay!

Its confirmed, our fireplace will be safe to use once we get a liner for the chimney. Of course that will cost us about $3K to do but for safety purposes with the heat (near the furnace) and for heating purposes in the winter (we were planning on keeping the temp low and using the fireplace on those really cold days to heat the first floor) we're going to go ahead with it.

I see now why people say that buying a house can suck your time and money away. Still, I'm looking forward to having a nice comfy and pretty place to lounge around and read, do homework and entertain.

Wheee!

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We found out some interesting points:

-sandblasting the brick in the fireplace could do some serious damage to its structural integrity. We can either use some 5f5 and a wire brush to strip the ugly paint that they put inside or just let the stuff melt off with the first fire (which will be smelly, but will be safe). I think we're going to just paint the outside of the brick black to cover up the ugly brick red/brown color that they painted it (why the hell did they do that?)

-our monster huge furnace is actually a conversion, it was an oil furnace and when the heating was converted to gas they just put the gas pipes into it (explains while its so fricken huge). Which means that PARTS of it were updated fairly recently while other parts are around 20-30 years old. So it MAY not give out as soon as us as we thought (but we shall see).

-there used to be another chimney in the house for coal - now though the chimney just ends in the basement and that explains the random hole in the ceiling in the basement stairway (which proved useful for snaking wires to the 2nd floor) and why there was some random brick inside the dining room wall in the corner.

-since our main chimney isn't in the middle of the house, so that it LOOKED centered outside the mason built it out wider than it needed to be. Unfortunately that's why we need to line it; it allowed for more rain to come down over the years:/

-they suggested we pick up a carbon monoxide detector and leave it near our furnace as a safeguard since we have gas heat. Not a bad idea . . .