It all started with an impulse buy when we were going through antique shops on a trip to nearby Lewes and we picked up this bad boy for a bargain £100.

The idea was that we could save money by burning our stockpile of wood (we recently had our tree trimmed for safety) and also give us warmth in the lounge without heating rooms we didn’t use.

Fast forward 2 days and the Dazzler had got a builder to quote on opening up our fireplace and installing this bad boy- just as soon as we had a sweep remove the gas liner that had been put in many years before.

Now it turns out December is a busy time for chimney sweeps (yes that was sarcasm!) so I had resigned myself to an open fire free holiday season with the promise of a crackly new year!!!

All that changed however when I saw this picture posted on Facebook…

Yes that is my husband on our roof, without scaffolding, safety gear or even a ladder!! Not only did he get all of it out, saving us about £500 in the process, but he gave us this years Xmas card!!
A couple of days later our builder turned up and installed our beauty, leaving us with instructions to let everything dry for 3 days before using.

Now let me tell you this has been one of the longest three days of our lives. You do not know how difficult it is to resist the lureof burning things, when you have a gaping fireplace looking at you with that ‘feed me’ face on!!

However we managed and on Sunday, after we swept the chimney ourselves with borrowed brushes, we got our flame on….

and it was magnificent!!

Next stop- painting the chimney breast mustard!!!