The Dining Room Fireplace
Gustav Stickley, I read somewhere, designed houses so that the fireplace was the first thing that someone entering the house would see. Not too close to the entry to cause drafts into the main room, but close enough to invite the person inside to enjoy the warmth and shelter the fireplace promised.
One of my favorite books about America’s Arts & Crafts Interiors is “Inside the Bungalow” by Paul Duchscherer & Douglas Keister. In it they refer to the fireplace as the “symbol of hearth and home.” Years ago, I saw a photo in that book of a fireplace that never left my mind, and I knew a fireplace like that one would end up in my miniature house somewhere, someday. Now, this house of mine has four fireplaces, in the living room, master bedroom and studio, three rooms that are located one above the other in the floorplan sharing a common chimney. The fourth is in the dining room on a wall with the kitchen stove directly on the other side. They share a chimney that goes up a chase through the middle of the house to the roof above the third floor. I’ve researched this house plan as much as I can and find no indication about how it was heated. It’s possible that there was a coal fired boiler in the basement, but there are no specifics on the plans for plumbing and heat registers associated with a hot water or steam heating system. It’s also possible that heating was left to the family’s fire maker and the home’s four fireplaces.
This fireplace will be in the dining room. Based on the photograph, I made a cardboard model of the copper fireplace hood, with lots of trial and error! I hand hammered the copper sheet stock before cutting the pieces and silver soldering them together. The fireplace will eventually be covered with a pinkish brick and slate on the hearth. Stacey’s Masonry is closed now due to the Covid 19 pandemic, and my brick order is on hold. “Sheltering in place” has given me a lot of time to devote to my house and its furnishings, but I will have to put the bricking of this fireplace off for a while. (To see this finished fireplace, check out the “Photo Catch-up post.)
