Bum!...

We've spent the last couple of months having one of the fireplaces opened up, so that we could burn wood/coal.

It took so long because the builder was fitting us in, in between other jobs.

Our house looks a complete mess, the floor boards have been wrecked by the builder traipsing in and out with his kit, and will have to be resanded and stained.

EVERYTHING in the room is full of building dust and needs to be scrubbed down, but we've been waiting until the chimney sweep came out, just in case we cleaned everything and then the room ended up full of soot.

So, last night, Mr Sweep came out, the chimney was nice and clean, the brush came out of the top of the chimney on the first pass. Result.

However, due to the fact that the builder said we HAD to line the fireplace out with firebricks, the fire opening is quite shallow, and the basket that we had bought actually sits underneath the arch of the fireplace. This means that when the sweep lit a smoke bomb to make sure that everything was clear, the whole room became black and smokey, due to the fact that the smoke bounces off the arch and back into the room.

Bum.

Plan B.

We'll buy a multi fuel burning stove.

Except - the smoke from the smoke bomb exited via two different chimney pots, which means that there is a hole in the chimney somewhere, allowing the smoke to travel into one of the bedroom fireplaces and is a potential 'death trap'.

Grrr....

Looks like we might have a very expensive bowl of Pot Pourri, as that is basically all the fire can be used for. Big piles of logs looking pretty.

OR - we can get a wood burning stove, and have a flexible liner fitted down the whole length of the chimney - which means MORE money...

Dilemmas, dilemmas.