I bought a fireplace with a house

Good news: The fireplace is approved for use! The chimney sweep visited and everything looked good. The house has large fireplace that takes up about 1/8 of the whole house. It has a wood stove and a separate baking oven with a large brick hearth. It's not original to the house but laid about a decade ago. Something similar might have been here originally, as the style is traditional.

Getting a fire started in the stove was very smokey, though, and I'm happy that I had help with lighting a fire for the first time. The chimney sweep said that the brickwork is moist and cold, and it's a lot warmer on the roof, which makes it hard to get a good flow in the ducts. We got the fire going after about a half hour of smoke-lining my little hut, and he recommended a hot air gun for helping to jumpstart the air flow in the future. Maybe we sent out some accidental smoke signals, because two neighbours showed up on my doorstep, wanting to book the chimney sweep 😄 

The weekend before, I worked with emptying the fireplace of ashes, cleaning the stove and clearing the surroundings so you could access all the sweeping hatches. I found a staggering amount of cookware stashed above the baking oven and in the kitchen cabinet. Unfortunately, almost all of them were in very bad shape - not just sooty on the outside but very worn and dirty on the inside. I was only able to save the large steel pot, that's probably just been used to boil water, and a little kettle. I'll have to see if I can clean them up. I also found some cast iron pans in the oven, I'll try to clean and season those with the help of youtube academy! The rest went off to the metal recycling to become new and shiny products.

The cast iron stove was fairly rusty to begin with. I cleaned it with soapy water and some fine steel wool, which kind of worked, but was a bit too soft for this surface as it disintegrated into lint. I'm glad I took a before-picture as evidence, because the result was actually much better than I thought!

The chimney sweep thought that the fireplace was worth more than the rest of the house! 😭 I was slightly insulted, but he's probably right. As I've been spending time at the cottage, I've started to notice some issues. 

To be clear, I did expect there to be issues, but it's a different thing entirely to see them in actuality. For example, I noticed there's insect damage to the timber wall behind the fireplace. I don't know yet how far or deep it stretches. I know that it's a typical place to get insect damage, but it's a cold comfort when you do have it. I also noticed that the veranda roof has leaks. I thought the roof looked pretty good, so it's disappointing. Previously, I've found mouse holes in the floor, not to mention that the floor itself is very wonky. 

Perhaps I can console myself with the fact that if the house falls to bits around me, at least I have a fireplace? I can rebuild the house around it! 😄 I know it's silly, but somehow comforting. At least there's one part of the house that's not falling apart. Dealing with a house renovation on your own can be mentally very taxing, I have experience of that. You need to make a conscious effort to counter negative thoughts and keep reminding yourself that everything will work out just fine.