eernest4 said:
Well, now I know who won the booby prise for the uglyest & most rusty stove.
And that would be me!
I don't care because its in a dark & dingy basement & suits its surroundings well & throws fair to good heat, so i am happy enough.
I don't need a stove so pretty that makes my tv set look ugly.
All I need is a stove that does the job.
I'm not going to show youall a picture because you neat freaks would probably be in shock for a week,if not longer.
I am begining to get bumed out now. Even bv's cinder block basement looks 10 times better than mine & his stove is not even rusty looking any!
I guess I'm going to have to start looking at redneck hillbilly pictures from the poorest part of appleachia, may be some one that converted a 55 gal oil drum into a stove , to find something uglier than mine.
You guys kill me.
All that you have to do in your life is custom design beautiful rooms with jem
stones surrounding the most pretty and most expensive stoves that you can find.
I wouldnt be suprised if one of you had a solid gold stove ,just for show, that you couldnt even build a fire in because it would melt at low tempuratures
Some of those set ups , you might as well burn one dollar bills in the stove to keep warm, it would be cheaper!
I can only assume you're just having some fun and being funny, rather than being a Negative Nancy Eernest4.
If not, you need to relax a bit, sit back and throw another log on the fire so to speak and enjoy what you have, not what you don't have . . . not everyone here is fantastically wealthy . . . in fact I would wager the majority of us are a lot like you . . . working slobs who work hard during the week at our 9 to 5 job and then work hard on the weekend cutting wood or working around the house . . . what most of us have in our homes is not due to our fantastic acumen when it comes to picking stocks or that we lucked out and were born with a silver spoon in our mouth, but rather many of us have what we have because we have been working . . . and working for some time.
Not everyone has the fanciest stove . . . and that's OK . . . many of us started out with less fancy stoves and got fancier, prettier ones as time allowed and as we began to pay off more bills . . . and some of us choose to stick with our old, plain Jane stoves . . . regardless of what stove you have, there are only two important things . . . 1) Is it safe to use in your home? and 2) Is it keeping you warm?
As for the hearth and the custom designed rooms . . . well I've been in my house now for close to 14 years . . . and I'm still puttering away at it . . . renovating a room at a time when time, money and my will-power allow . . . some rooms look great in my opinion (I love my master bedroom), some rooms look terrible (the kitchen definitely needs to be re-done as it has a pink laminate counter and home-made cupboards) and some rooms are in the process of being re-done (the living room still needs trim and my hallway and dining room still have sheetrock up.)
I suspect that most of us are in the same boat . . . we don't have our own construction crew . . . or the money . . . to renovate these rooms . . . and so what we have is due to our hard work over time or is due to the fact that we saved and paid someone to do the work . . . in both cases it was done slowly, over time . . . and so while you may see one shot from a room and think the whole place must look like that . . . the truth is . . . for many of us, it's not the case . . . or if it is, it wasn't always like that and is only that way today after several years of work.
As for having nice and neat photos . . . well that's only natural . . . I'm no clean freak, but by gory, before I take a picture of my stove or hearth and post it on hearth.com for all of the members to see I'll take a few minutes to sweep up the spilled ash, woodchips and clean the haze off the glass . . . just like I would take a few minutes to brush my teeth and comb my hair if I was having a picture taken of me . . . normally I may look like a slob, hair askew, glasses smudged and shirt untucked . . . but it's only natural to pretty things up a bit if you're taking a picture.
So relax Eernest . . . in time things will change and things will improve with work . . . and there is no shame in having a safe, warm woodstove.