It took six months of living here, but finally it was cold enough to start a fire! It may sound silly, but my wife and I have never owned a home before.
Not only that, we had never even rented a place this nice before.
Sometimes it is hard to believe we have come so far, from living in a squalid one bedroom apartment to owning a home in the suburbs! But after we moved in, the weather was simply too warm to ever start a fire. Once the fall settled in and the temps dropped, we loaded up the fireplace with wood and started a crackling blaze. We had a great time in front of the fireplace for about twenty minutes, before we realized the room was filling up with smoke! The smoke alarms went off, and then the smart thermostat started beeping with an air quality alert, and the nice evening was ruined. Having never used a fireplace before, I didn’t know that I had to reach into the chimney and open the flue before starting a fire. I am not an idiot, I just didn’t know the ins and outs of using a fireplace, and it’s not like there was an instruction manual! We had to turn on all the fans, unplug the smoke alarms and the smart thermostat, and open the windows for a few hours. By the next morning the smoke was gone, the air quality was back to normal, and we were ready to try to use the fireplace once again! It went better this time.