Active Fireplace

Official activation of our fireplace for the winter of 2006/2007 occurred on Wednesday, December 6, 2006. That’s late for us, usually getting it going in mid-November. It’s not that we didn’t wish for a fire earlier, but we got along without starting one and I have spent a lot of time in “bed” and just didn’t venture to get things gathered up all the way to actually make a fire. (note: it has been quite warm the end of November, and we definitely didn’t need “heat” of any sort then, and only had a little while of cooler temps before that. It’s a recent innovation of the weather to actually be cold at night and chilly in the day overall.)

It’s a joy to have a fire in the fireplace. I love the cheery yellow orange red light, dancing and glowing. It’s been sunny the last few days, and that’s alright, but on the days of overcast darkness the fireplace is the only thing that makes me feel right inside the house, up and about, in the “winter” time.

Oh the sunlight, we have some more of that in the kitchen. We have a new window installed where the sink will be in the future. The old window is still in, and so there is a good amount of morning sunlight that traverses through the kitchen from one window to the next, and daylight galore while the sun is in the east/south. Eventually, sooner than later now, we’ll have that old window removed and a nice sliding door installed. We have it, just needs to be installed (there are plumbing and wiring things to be moved beforehand.) Once that change happens, we’ll have even more light, more than opposite of what we used to have. (Old setup was french double doors on the left, and one 36×36 window on the right, a 20-feet long space with the right side window moreso in the middle of the wall, sort of.) The new window is in the right-hand side of the old french door space, so down on the left, but not all the way down, not in the middle of the wall at all, and the new doors will be down at the end of the right side of the space. So it’s a flip-flop trade, kind of. Early morning light comes in the new window, and later morning light will come in the to-be sliding glass doors.

The “dark cave” feeling in the kitchen is done-for, gone. Irradicating darkness, adding more light soon. Yippee! (of course I’m speaking of daytime here.)