Hidden Costs
I think the hardest part of renovating your own home, especially as an interior designer, are the costs of the things you can’t see. The things that are literally inside the walls. Insulation is one such example. That’s going to cost what?! @#$%!
Our build took a small pause while we battled with how to approach our broken chimney. I love the face of the fireplace. It’s granite flagstone with a real 70s vibe. I toyed with the idea of just leaving it as a non-working fireplace / accent wall and maybe put some candles in it. But being a real anti-faux … well… anything really, I just couldn’t do it. I’m the type of person who analyses the scenario when I see something questionable. I love love love Jenna Lyons’ Soho loft. It is interior design genius. But what’s with the fireplace? When I saw that I started wondering, can a loft have a fireplace, and a chimney, how does that work exactly? I kind of obsessed over it until I saw her interview in eyeswoon’s book out-takes where she said: I HATE TO ADMIT IT BUT MY BIGGEST DESIGN FAUX-PAS WAS : THE FAKE FIREPLACE—COULDN’T HELP IT
OK. That’s it, we are not doing faux!
I love a real wood burning fire. After a long day of skiing, there is nothing better then coming home to sit by the crackling fire. This was never an option for us in Berlin… because the land is flat for a long time in all directions and because we lived in apartments, which, interestingly enough, were once heated by coal stoves ornately decorated with tile and set in the corner of every room. But we never had one of those apartments and I would say it’s probably not the same experience.
When we found out about the state of our chimney, it turned out we actually should not have been having fires due to risk of carbon monoxide poisoning. But since we survived, we had a taste of just how nice it was to use. We talked to several contractors about what to do. The first thing they all said was to just get a fireplace insert. A fireplace insert is essentially a wood burning stove set into the fireplace, with the pipe running up through the chimney. As stone and brick fireplaces were built on-site, they were never standardised in their sizing, so the inserts often have to be retrofitted with metal panels at the sides and top to fill the hole and they always have a glass front. My first reaction to this was: no way, it would absolutely wreck the look of the flagstone.
Our next option was to tear the whole thing down, install a wood burning stove and build a new fireplace surround. This way would avoid the ugly retrofitting, but still have the glass and we loose the stone. I had to laugh because this is the option that was most pushed on us. We got a lot of quizzical looks when we told people we want to keep the fireplace. But I couldn’t help but think that this sounds very expensive, why can’t we just re-build the chimney?
Chimney building is a bit of a dying art. The first company we spoke to wanted to take down the flagstone surround, rebuild the chimney, and then rebuild the surround. That’s when things paused. We can’t build the walls if that needs to happen. Another company wanted to cut the back of the fireplace completely out and rebuild it from behind. The third and last company we saw came in and told us how they could fix it with minimal damage to the exterior and explained how they have a process to remove the smoke stains and bring the stone back to its original beauty. Music to my ears. Yes, thank you, it is beautiful, right?
This is where we are so far. It’s costing more than we had budgeted. But I think the end results will be worth it. Stay tuned…