This happened today.

The shiny, that is.

When we first purchased our home, the only source of heat it had was a wood-burning stove. Which after a year was more than I could handle. I’m a city boy! I don’t like that whole having to get up at night to put wood in the fire so your water doesn’t freeze. Or your blood.

We removed the stove and all the chimney portions after we had central heat and air installed. I don’t recall the reasoning now. But I think it had to do with insurance costs at the time.

Fast forward to last year, right before winter. Our heat pump went out. And it was either $13K to replace it, or just deal with the winter using the heat strips that stilled worked. After a shocking but not surprising power bill at the end of last winter, we decided to put the stove back in.

Which required a new chimney to be installed. New, because we didn’t save the old parts when we removed it. That’s technically not true. They were just used for other projects around the house.

All that meant I had to climb a ladder and install chimney sections.

And I dislike heights. Granted, it is only 30 feet from the ground to the top of the chimney. But that is still higher than I want to be. On a ladder.

But I got it all installed without breaking anything. On myself.

We had to do a test burn while it was still warm enough to open the house up, in case of smells or other… issues.

No issues with smell. Or anything else.

Although our little girls have never seen a fire before, and one of them is particularly nosy…

And then there’s me, enjoying it the only way I know how…

I guess it’s good to have a backup heat source in case the power quits flowing. But I won’t be happy about it.