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Drawing Board | Fireplace inserts Blazes onBoard cold nights bring back great memories of childhood. Drawing | Fireplace inserts January Blazes on10 cold nights bring back great memories of childhood. Order Reprints January 10 BY DAN MAGINN Order Reprints BY DAN MAGINN Drawing Board Drawing Board
AtAt thethe heartheart of my ancestral of my ancestral home in St. Joe was the family home in St. Joe was the family room. It was an oddly proportioned and room. It space, was long an oddly low, with a Space Age, glitterproportioned space, long and impregnated ceiling.
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low, with a Space Age, glitter-
On the west wall of the room, two large-scale elements impregnated ceiling. competed for our attention: a brick and awall massive Onfireplace the west of the room, Zenith television set — a set so two large-scale elements dense and heavy that it exhibited its ownfor microcompeted our attention: a gravitational field. It was in this brick fireplace a massive room, strawberry Quik and in hand, that I spent television the lion’s shareset of — a set so Zenith my childhood. This was ages ago andback heavy —dense in the 1970s, when that tiny it flakes of frozen water, or “snow” exhibited its own microas we called it, would routinely gravitational field. It was in this fall from the sky.
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room, strawberry Quik in hand, For nine months out of the year, the Zenith and its cavalcade of share of that I spent the lion’s sitcoms won the battle for the my childhood. was ages ago attention of my family, This but during dark days of winter — inthe the 1970s, back when tiny FRED BLOCHER the fireplace had the upper Sure, architect Dan Maginn's chimney is cracked. But he found flakes of those frozen water, “snow” hand. During months, we or a great fix for his Brookside home. sparked a fire almost every as weupcalled it, would routinely night. fall from the sky. About this feature I became hooked on the mildly Kansas City contains such vibrant public and private dangerous rituals involved out in buildings that House + Home wants to share residential For nine months of the year, design through an architectural perspective. Local architect making one: I loved splitting Dan Maginn writes about ideas, building materials and the Zenith and its cavalcade of logs with a maul and bringing projects. Drawing Board runs the second Sunday of each
sitcoms won the battle for the attention of my family, but during the dark days of winter the fireplace had the upper hand. During those months, we sparked up a fire almost every night. I became hooked on the mildly dangerous rituals involved in making one: I loved splitting logs with a maul and bringing
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Sure, architect Dan Maginn's chimney is cracked. But he found a great fix for his Brookside home.
About this feature Kansas City contains such vibrant public and private buildings that House + Home wants to share residential design through an architectural perspective. Local architect Dan Maginn writes about ideas, building materials and projects. Drawing Board runs the second Sunday of each month.
the chunks inside in our white canvas log carrier; I loved executing the intricate network More News of kindling and logs that would Drawing Board | Fireplace inserts ensure a roaring blaze; and perhaps most of all, I loved Read more H+H Drawing Board windmilling the jumbo fireplace matches across the sandpaper matchbox-bottom like Pete Townsend, then touching them to the doobie-like newspaper wads strategically located in the log structure. I loved the full sensory experience of a roaring fire — the
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them to the doobie-like newspaper wads strategically located in the log structure. I loved the full sensory experience of a roaring fire — the intense heat, the woodsy tang of smoke in the air, the crackle and spark as the fire took hold and the mesmerizing flame patterns that shifted through the night as it lived and died.
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Flash back to a cold night in late February 1977. That’s me, the skinny kid with the overalls, holding a bag of JetPuffed marshmallows. That’s me, staring into the fire, transfixed by the fleeting rhythms of the flames. That’s me, rosy-cheeked from the heat, promising my future self that a wood-burning fireplace would mark the center of my future home, once I was old enough to own one.
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Fast-forward 27 years to a steel-gray November day in 2004. That’s an older version of the previous me, standing in the front room of an old house that I had just bought — the house I currently occupy. That’s me reading the home inspection report for said house, frowning at the crippling pronouncement that the dream-dashing home inspector had scribbled 20 minutes before, as he sized up the house’s cracked, westleaning chimney: “Wd Brng Frplce: Unusbl.” Unusable! I was devastated.
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Without shelling out the price of a late model Lexus to completely rebuild it, my dream of charred marshmallows and newspaper-doobies and Pete Townsend matches and roaring fires seemed to be just that: an unrealizable vision, as abstract and distant as the fading memories of my own childhood. Dejected, I bought the place anyway, once I noticed that most of the other old houses in the neighborhood had wonky chimneys.
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After a couple of years of renovating everything in the house but the fireplace, I revisited the issue. I visited a fireplace showroom with my wife, and we discovered that some wily Scandinavians had invented a perfect solution to our conundrum: a self-contained, woodburning fireplace insert, sized to fit within our fireplace, with an insulated flue sized to fit within our cracked yet otherwise structurally sound chimney. Genius.
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Unlike the picturesque yet inefficient fireplace of my youth (which shot most of the heat up the chimney) the insert was engineered to extract as much heat as possible from the burning wood and to direct it outward into the house — a turbo-charged micro-furnace. And it looked cool, too: its sleek modern lines complemented the existing old-school wood trim in our front room and reinforced the old-meets-new theme that we established for our home.
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Now, as I sit in front of the fire with my family, I am reminded of my childhood and the role that a roaring fire played in warming it up. And as I add a chunk of oak and sit back, I can see my future moving forward. And with my warm wife on one side, and my warm 3-year-old on the other, it is decidedly rosy.
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Reach architect Dan Maginn, principal at El Dorado Inc. in Kansas City, at Eldo.us. Advertisement
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