Well... That was the first time I've made THAT mistake.  House full of smoke and some blistered paint on the mantle.

That was about 45 seconds of excitement and a couple of days of feeling like a retard.  Fuck... I know better than that.

LOL pics

Why the paint damage?

Did you start it with gas?

And don't close it unless you are 100% sure the fire is out.

Got woken up by the CO2 detector at 3am to a house full of smoke.

Been there, done that this fall. Alarming until you realize what the problem is.

I did something similar a couple weeks ago. I had to get rid of a few scraps of cardboard and ended up with a house full of smoke and some soot on the bottom of the mantle .

Well... I make a serious fire, and they catch pretty quickly.  So, I fired it up and had a little bit of smoke come out.  Of course, I had just got home after a 13 hour day, 3 hours of sleep the night before and THEN decided to go for a run.  Basically, I was pretty rummy-dummy and in a hurry.  Not a good enough excuse, but still.

Anyways, a little smoke came out and I thought, "I'm not getting a good draft, I'll crack the front door and that will get it going"

Oh boy, it certainly did... Fed cool, fresh air right to the fire that now had nowhere to go but out and up.  So, It blistered the paint pretty good and left some soot on the bricks.  Once I saw that I instantly realized what happened.  With the fire going so well it took longer than I would have liked to get through the flames and get that thing open.

The funny thing is that apparently, it's not the first time this has happened.... I started peeling the paint off and found scorched wood underneath.  I guess some previous owner is as stupid as I am.  


At least the upshot is that it helped convince the wife we need an honest to God wood stove insert instead of just a fireplace.

I find opening a window in the room my stove is in helps speed up the draft going up the chimney as well.

I dunno, doesn't it matter what it is you are burning.

We often run our fireplace with the flume closed, keeps heat in.  Of course we are burning fake ceramic logs, no wood.  No smoke.

My mom did this last week.



oops

Did this when I moved into my first place. The landlord said it was open but I really should have double checked. Had white brick all around the fireplace, had.