A Little Trip To The Forest Park Salv. Army Yielded A Hard To Find Treasure! Status: And CHEAP Too!

Take a good look at that price tag! Holy cow! The Girlfriend gets credit for this. I walked right by it and didn't notice it at all. We DO have a fireplace and we Have used it so it makes sense to have an appropriate set of Mid Century tools.

When we first moved in to this house we new we'd need a set of fireplace tools if we were to

use the fireplace at all. First we just bought a standard "traditional" set cheaply at an estate

sale for a couple bucks. They worked but were aesthetically less than appealing. Then we

bought a set from a buddy of mine who we met when he and his wife came by to buy a Broyhill

Brasilia cabinet. These were way better than the first set. We've been using them for about a

year. They are fine except one little chip in the handle of one of the tools. That little chip has

been bugging me.

The entire set here could use a little cleanup, but there aren't any little chips to bug me! It's

super heavy too. The base and "grapples" are cast iron. Like I said, Heavy!

The thing about using the fireplace is, I've found, that it totally messes with the thermostat and

consequently the temperature in all the other rooms of the house. We have radiant floor heat

and the thermostat is about 7 feet away from the fireplace. When you get a good fire roaring in

there is fools the thermostat into thinking it's plenty warm in the house and it turns off the boiler

for the floor. The beauty of radiant floor heat is consistency, and having a fire next to the

thermostat messes up that consistency. So maybe it's not a winter fireplace (and what a

WINTER we had!), but maybe it's a spring and fall fireplace. We do like to use it cuz' it sure is

pretty, but not if it makes the house cold!