Winter heat strategies

John and I would be happy if it were always summer. Summer forever! But New Mexico has a surprising amount of winter. So we decided we’d splurge on two winter mitigation methods – a gas fireplace and a hot tub.

Our fireplace was wood burning with a gas-assisted starter. In my mind, if there’s already a gas line going to the fireplace, it would be a shame to not have a gas fireplace!

Gas fireplace inserts can be expensive, but they can also be extremely good heaters. I don’t like to run the furnace all the time because it’s very drying and our air in New Mexico is already overly dry. Plus the furnace heats the whole house indiscriminately, and there’s no point in heating back bedrooms. The fireplace is very centrally located, allowing me to heat only the rooms I use during the day.

I contracted to get a gas insert installed this summer. One of the things I made sure to ask for is an easy on-off switch. Our previous gas fireplace had a switch on the wall – it was great, just flip the switch and the fireplace came on. No messing with lighting it or anything. The salesman assured me that it would be even easier than that – it had several settings, all controllable with a remote. Great!

But then, when the installation guys came out to do the site check, they mentioned that there would be a plug coming out of the fireplace, running on top of the hearth, and plugging into a nearby outlet. I was like, what? That’s so dorky. I had requested a switch on the wall.

So I had to go back down and haggle with the original salesman. He and I had an agreement about the remote operation of the fireplace that did not involve a plug hanging off my hearth. He was resistant at first.

Then he noticed me looking at the hot tubs at his competitor’s store next door. In the end, he agreed to hardware the electrical line from the fireplace, which required a little bit of drywall work. He was hoping that if he kept me happy, he could sell me one of the ridiculously expensive hot tubs in his store.

But the hot tub project was on hold until I got the fireplace project done first. Good thing I started the fireplace project early this summer, because they took forever. Even after the fireplace was in, it took awhile to get the electrical done. And then we got to look at patched drywall for several weeks while waiting for someone to finally come and do the tape and texture. Even after they finally did the tape and texture, they never did paint it. I ended up doing the painting myself.

But it looks great and works great now. It puts out a lot of heat!

The next step was to redo the mantle. Here’s what our fireplace mantle looked like when we bought the house.

The oversized clock was part of the staging, so it was gone once we took possession of the house. But I disliked the stark white mantle, particularly because the brick is actually darker than it looks in that picture. Also the style of my furnishings is muted, with gray and beige tones, and a bit rustic.

I wanted a more natural looking mantle. I also didn’t like the clunky style of the support pieces. I briefly looked into buying a new mantle, but decided I would try to sand off the white paint myself.

My goal was to sand off nearly all the white paint, leaving just a few flecks to make it look aged. As I ground through the paint, I discovered a thin layer of dark stain. I wanted to leave little bits of the stain on, to encourage a weathered look. The stain ground off much faster and easier than the white paint, so mostly I either undershot – and left on too much white paint, or overshot – ending up with the stain ground off with the last of the white paint. But in the end, I got it to a mostly sanded state that I was happy with.

When the previous owners had painted the mantle white, they made a lazy mistake – they didn’t take the mantle down off the brick first. They must have assumed it would be difficult to remove and replace. Turns out the mantle pops right off. It sure would have been nice if they would have realized that. Instead, they left streaks of white paint on the brick, outlining the mantle and its supports. We tried to use a solvent to get the paint off the brick, but in the end we had to grind it off.

John also installed a new support system for the mantle, which is thin and black, just along the bottom edge of the mantle where it meets the brick – it’s barely visible unless you bend down and look under it.

The ends of the mantle were the most challenging to sand, because the wood was roughest on the ends. The ends were very pitted and the paint had sunk far into the wood, requiring lots of sanding.

Done!

After the fireplace was done, we ordered a small hot tub from Home Depot, and installed it ourselves. It cost a fraction of what the fancy ones in the hot tub stores cost. And it just plugs into a regular outlet, no electrical work needed.

The delivery agreement was just for them to drop it curbside. We were worried about getting it into our backyard ourselves, but it turned out to be easy. The guys dropping it off left it up on its end, on two of their roller dollies, so we could move it into the backyard ourselves. (I tipped them well for the gift of the dollies.)