Twas the night before Thanksgiving...

I'm not quite sure how start telling this story. Let me just say, that it was not a normal night here in our home. Dinner was very late. The kids were haphazardly put to bed. Levi was still awake and going strong at 10:00 p.m. Our house was quite chilly as we hadn't started a fire yet. We've been a bit behind with things this fall and still haven't gotten our wood. Instead, Dieter has been cutting downed trees on our neighbor's property. This works ok as long as he has time to get it done during the day. But, bring a day like Wednesday, and no wood gets cut. We decided to buy some KILN DRIED wood at our local Stewarts to tide us over until our real wood arrives this weekend. We used to buy wood from them back when our fireplace was just an ornament. It burns well, really well, as the wood is as dry as it can get.

Around 10:30, Dieter loaded up the firebox with wood. One of the pieces seemed to be just a bit too long. From experience we know to put a little extra oomph into the old arm muscle when closing the door. However, this time, that oomph gave us a resounding crack and then a loud roar as the air intake increased exponentially. This resulted in a roaring fire within minutes as the wood was just so ready to go. No problem - Dieter decided that he would just jerry-rig some slate over the opening and all would be well. I had reservations and looked around my house. Was I concerned about wakening my 4 sleeping children and herding them all out of the door? No. I needed to get Thomas the Train, his friends and track off of my floor because the fire department was most assuredly going to be called. I mentally calculated how many of my dinner dishes I could get washed, too, and if there was anytime to move the laundry upstairs. Yup, my priorities were definitely in the right place....

Ten minutes later, my living room floor was clean. Levi was finally asleep in bed. The dinner dishes and laundry would just have to wait. Dieter had no success with the slate and the fire was as out of control as it could be in it's confined space. At this point, we began to worry about a chimney fire. Dieter decided to put it out and threw a pot of water at it. That was not such a good idea as it kicked back a lot of steam and soot. And it didn't put out the fire. So we pulled out the big guns and emptied the fire extinguisher. That worked.

By now, it's 10:30 p.m. and Dieter has to get on the roof to check the chimney. He saw something he didn't like and the next thing I knew, water was pouring out of the fireplace. I quickly grabbed some towels from the clean laundry pile that is permanently on the end of the couch and threw them on the floor. I realized that it was a good thing that we hadn't dialed 911 and that I never manage to put away the laundry. If my husband was making this much of a mess by himself, I can only imagine what the fire department would have done.


Finally, the water stopped and my husband came inside. All was well. He had only seen sparks at the top but had wanted to be sure nothing was going on inside of the chimney. We cleaned up the mess and turned on the oil.

My lesson learned here is to NEVER put kiln dried wood in your woodstove/fireplace insert. We should have just turned on the furnace. Now I have wood coming and no fireplace to put it into - that is, until we get the replacement glass.

And through this all, my 10 year old was asleep on the chair. He never woke once. Ahh...to be young again and sleep deeply.