Fire in the Hole! - Part 2

When we last saw our heroes they had vanquished the evil Pellet von Stovensen. However in their haste they laid destruction to the village Stovensen was terrorizing. Now comes the part of movies that no one ever mentions, cleaning up after the wanton carnage of battle. The tax rate in Metropolis must be astronomical.

Behold, I have saved the city from certain annihilation!

However in the real world we need to clean up the messes we make. Some might say that if you didn't create messes in the first place you would be fine. I say you can't make an omelette without destroying your fireplace first. With the massive hole in the back of our newly freed fireplace it was time to learn how to lay bricks effectively.

Good enough

Our first challenge lay in the fact that sometime in the history of this fireplace someone thought it would be a good idea to paint it black. Not entirely black, just around most of the middle leaving scorch marks on the other bricks. With the bricks that are left it is going to be very apparent that I have patched a hole. Paint stripper is clearly in my future. Before we can get to any of the fixing I needed to get rid of the old flue pipe. From what I have seen so far I have no idea how this is attached to the chimney, if at all.

Father Christmas has a rude surprise in store for him

You can't see all the way up to the top so I didn't want to just start yanking on the pipe. In the event that it is attached I'm not so sure the dust and spiderwebs holding this chimney together would be happy with me tugging on it. I had to be very careful because moving the pipe even slightly caused a shower of soot to come out and lots of rattling from the chimney. It was also very heavy and awkward.

I tried loosening the connections for the flex pipe to see if I could remove it one section at a time. This process included me sticking my arm all the way up and reaching the joined section with a screwdriver then trying to pry the sections apart. Since it was difficult to see I ended up just hitting the section with the screwdriver a bunch. I had not expected this to work.

If you look closely you can see that there are rivets holding the flex pipe onto part of the straight pipe. Someone went through a lot of effort to join the pipes together like that. Upon striking the pipe I found their resolve did not last very long. A joining sleeve was 110% securely attached to the flex pipe and then they just slid it into the straight pipe. Nothing actually holding the pipe and sleeve together other than dust and the dark arts. A couple good whacks and the flex pipe came down on my leg while the straight pipe wedged itself into the corner, thankfully taking the time to shower me with soot and rodent poo.

I covered the end of the straight pipe and set it inside the chimney on a ledge where there was once a brick. Not sure how the brick was removed since no human could reach it. Maybe brick gnomes were stealing them, who knows?

At this point I think it is safe to use

Unfortunately all the bricks that were painted black were not to be found. I'm sure they didn't survive the removal process so I was going to make due with the bricks that were holding the old stove up. First I needed to knock out the half bricks that were shattered so that I could replace the void with full size bricks spaced properly. This was an hour spent with the Wee One handing me chisels and saying 'Helpa, Helpa' while I tried to contain the clouds of mortar dust.

At this point things were going crazy so there are no further 'along the way' photos. The floor was covered in soot and mortar pieces, the Wee One was grabbing shards of brick to put in his tractor, I was choking on 200 year old dust. It wasn't pretty but we finally got the area prepped for repair.

Pro Tip: Soak your bricks before you lay them.

The above tip is pretty important depending on your brick type. My bricks were made out of what can only be described as hard sponges because as soon as I put mortar on them it dried up faster than a Nazi drinking from the wrong chalice. Or some vague joke about dry towns during Prohibition. 

See how happy the protesters are? They didn't want eternal life, just a decent pint.

Once I got into the swing of it the process started to work. I would dunk a brick in the bucket of water, slop mortar around the general area that I wanted to put said brick, then squish the brick into place. On the DIY shows them make it look so easy to lay brick and it actually is, unless you care about things like being 'level' or 'properly sized'. That type of tomfoolery is for contractors, not me.

With the final brick in place I fixed up around the edge of the fireplace as well. There was a nice space in between where previous owners of the house stored dog fur and cobwebs, but we have enough storage already so I decided to seal it up.

There comes a point in most of my projects where I just lose it and start doing whatever it takes to finish. This point came with filling in the edges of the fireplace. I couldn't fit the trowel in the space properly and started making a mess so I reverted to caveman technique and just used my hands. A few minutes of splattering around with mortar and everything was done. After the mortar started to set I was able to use a wire brush to scrub up all the extra mortar and detritus scattered around the work site and vacuum up all the remaining bits.

Pro Tip: Don't use your house vacuum to clean up mortar.

Just need to find some Floo Powder and getting to work will be a snap

Not too bad for an evenings work in my opinion. I have now restored the fireplace to some of its former beauty. After poking around I found 2 pintles attached into the fireplace. It looks like there was an old fireplace crane installed when it was originally built. It is very disappointing that I haven't been able to find the crane anywhere and I'm sure someone just tossed in the rubbish. Those were custom made to size and have to be installed while you are building the fireplace. There is no way I am ripping the pintles out, so now I have to scour the antique stores for a properly sized replacement. Either that or contact my local blacksmith to forge one for me. Lots of work for a small decoration but who doesn't love antique cooking tools?

- The Porter -