Cottage Fireplace Makeover: Wood-Burning Stove
Last weekend, I was perusing Instagram when I came across an image that stopped me in my scroll.
The creator of @hayes.cottage captured a roaring fire within her wood-burning stove, which sat inside her fireplace.
It was just so cozy and inviting. It made me long for the ability to have a fire in our fireplace. But then it got the wheels turning: Couldn’t we do something similar with ours?
Backstory: We’ve used our fireplace only once in the nearly 12 years we’ve lived here. It was on a cold December night in 2010, and for reasons my husband and I can’t entirely remember, we decided it wasn’t safe to continue using.
In my husband’s curious investigation, he theorizes that, at some point, the bottom half of the original fireplace failed. It was “fixed” with a new exterior, but the inside of the fireplace was haphazardly patched. Given what we can see, it just doesn’t seem wise to expose the interior to a direct fire.
But a fire contained within a wood-burning stove? That seems totally doable.
My husband was immediately intrigued by the woodburning-stove-in-fireplace idea and started searching Facebook Marketplace. On Monday morning, 24 hours after I showed him the picture he had located a real beauty.
The beautiful cream-colored vintage 1985 Vermont Castings Resolute stove had the right look, the right dimensions, and the right price. It sat out in the garage for a few days until we could make time to bring it inside. Meanwhile, I’ve been plotting away at a total fireplace makeover to go with our new stove.
This past weekend, my husband cleaned out the fireplace and hauled this 400-pound beauty inside. We still need to find the correct pipe fittings to match the slightly oval-shaped top of the stove. But goodness if she isn’t just sitting so pretty in the fireplace.
I’m hoping we can get our outfitted and functioning while there’s still a bit of winter left to experience in Florida. If you aren’t already doing so, please follow along my Facebook or Instagram pages for our behind-the-scenes work on getting it up and running and our overall fireplace makeover.
