Warm & Toasty

After months of hard work put in by my sweet hubby, the woodburning stove is in! And tonight, I am sitting here all warm and toasty, enjoying our very first fire. It. Is. Awesome.
In case you're wondering why I'm so excited about this, I'll fill you in. See, we have a geothermal heating system with a furnace backup. And while geothermal is great, efficient, and inexpensive to run...you never feel that hot blast of heat, because there is none...well, at least unless the temperature dips below where it can keep up...then the furnace kicks on. But that is also when the bill goes up! LOL! The geothermal system keeps our house at a nice even temperature, but I sometimes feel a little bit chilly even when the house is 69 degrees. Once we finished the basement, we knew we'd need some supplemental heat, and the hunt was on for a woodburning stove.

We originally found an older style Buck stove, which is what we had in our house growing up, so I was totally happy with that. Plus, we got a great deal on it. The people who owned it had only burned in it like twice in the past 12 years! But as we got closer to the point where Barry was going to have to install it, he started to be on the search for stovepipe for the chimney. Stovepipe is expensive, let me just tell you that! Well, what he found was that with the tax credits he would get with buying a newer, more efficient stove and pipe, it would actually cost the same amount as buying and installing the older one. So guess what we did? We listed our old Buck stove on Ebay (and sold it!) and bought a newer, more efficient Lopi stove. It's beautiful and compact, and you can even cook on it if you lose power! You had to know that little fact would appeal to me!

So here it is, our new Lopi stove, which has been keeping me warm & toasty on these chillier evenings, and will be running nonstop this winter... I can hardly wait! Oh, how I've missed good old wood heat!!! And doesn't Barry's hearth and mantle look nice? I'm dying to get the ceiling and all of the painting finished. But hey, this will do for now.

I think the littlest boy and I will be taking advantage of snuggling in the basement today, in fact. He is a sick little boy, and we are trying to get him well. No worries, though. Just a fever, cough, and headache. Lots of love, vitamin C, rest, and oscillococcinum are on tap for the day...same as yesterday. Hopefully by tomorrow he'll be back to his normal self!

Have a great day, and stay well, peeps!