It's Out of the Box!

If you have been anxiously wondering when I would reveal the contents of the giant shipping crate (which I wrote about earlier, here), the secret is out. The crate contained….our new fireplace.

Despite its venerable age our house never had any fireplaces--only stoves. A fireplace is something we’ve always thought was missing. Although we love a wood fire, insurance considerations and mild asthma meant a wood burning fireplace wasn’t a real option. We are pretty delighted with our little gas fireplace. It is manufactured in Canada by a small company called Thermart that began by making compact fireplaces for yachts. Yesterday and today, Eric Bauman of Bauman Mechanical installed it for us in the niche we’d built for it in our eating room wall.

The evolution of the fireplace niche and a brief glimpse of the outdoors

We positioned it just above table height so we can dine by firelight all through the long winter and on chilly nights all year. We first discovered the company a couple of years ago when we were looking for a shallow, direct vent, low BTU fireplace that wouldn’t take up a lot of space in a small room. The fireplace fits in a standard 6” wall and protrudes only another 3”, which makes it one of the thinnest fully vented fireplaces available.

The fireplace in its niche and with its cover

We didn’t get around to ordering our fireplace until this year, and we’re lucky we waited because the new model has a switch that doesn’t require electricity, which means our fireplace will run even during a power outage. It has a thermostat which automatically turns the flame on and off and a glowing blue remote control. Thermart has a very interesting collection of fireplaces and also does custom work. We chose the LE model called Clarity, which is the simplest of the bunch. The style is sleek. Since we weren’t trying to mimic an historic fireplace, we though the plain geometry and stainless surround would look great with our future kitchen appliances. We get a lot of pleasure every time we get a chance to buy a product from a small innovative Canadian company. We’re surprised we don’t read more about Thermart in design magazines and newspaper columns.

Now you'll have to wait (breathlessly) to see how we finish that untaped drywall.