I had been having some trouble with the fireplace, some of the cement between the bricks was flaking out, and there was nothing but smoke coming into the house.
There was plenty of heat, however it was also putting smoke in our eyes.
I talked to the heating and A/C corporation and asked who I should contact to get our fireplace repaired. They told me about a cement layer they knew. When I called the woman, she made an appointment to come out to the house. She said she could repair the broken bricks, which would make the hearth and mantle look better, but I needed someone to scrub the chimney and make sure the flue was working properly. This made sense, and I called the local chimney sweep and she was there two days later. All I wanted was for our fireplace to be repaired before Christmas, and I was starting to wonder if that was going to happen. When the chimney sweep was finished with the chimney, she had poor news. She said there was a lot of debris and creosote in the chimney that she had removed. There were also some broken bricks and cracks in between them that needed to be fixed. She wouldn’t propose using the fireplace until I had the chimney totally repaired. I looked at our fireplace and shook my head. I was realizing a fire in the fireplace may not happen this year. I would just get a fireplace insert that ran on electricity, and hopefully I could find one that looked like it had flames in it.