Old Stove...New Stove

crow said:

Thanks for the compliments all!
It's actually a Tribute I'm burning...I almost went with a Homestead...and sometimes I think it might have been better with a longer burn time/ log capacity, but I'm pretty happy with this little stove. The old stove saw 20 years+ of use by the previous owner(and it was used when HE got it!) and the clearances (or lack of them) freaked me out from a safety standpoint. You can't tell from my pics , but the house is only 14 feet wide ...which leaves me with a 12' interior width in the room. It's kind of a shotgun house~two story. The stove is on the ground floor. I's basically one room on the ground floor and two rooms and a small bathroom on the top floor. A pretty open floor plan.
So, I needed something small that wouldn't take up too much room and also didn't want to roast myself OUT of the room...though , in hindsight - I don't think it would have been a problem.
It's cool to see people's before and afters! Sometimes you don't notice the change as much because you're living with the incremental changes as your projects progress...but when I look at the photos , or settle down on the couch in front of the fire...it's a world of difference. Worth every penny & all the sweat equity to boot.

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crow said:

Webmaster said:

Wow, that is certainly a unique house!
Reminds me of something out of beetlejuice!

Is there a story behind this house (or type of house)?

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This house was one of the earliest houses to be built on this hillside, which mainly served as residences for the trainyard workers(one of the largest trainyards in the country is just below me at the bottom of the hill) and for the old textile mill workers from the early 1800's when Cincinnati was called the Queen City.
Annie Oakley won her first shooting match at the top of this hill , back in the day.
I am only the third person to own this house. The original owner was a german woman who's entire family lived here until well after her death...but the house was never taken out of her name until about 24 years ago , when a friend of mine bought it , and restored much of it. Life on a hill for 100 years is tough on a house. He rebuilt the old limestone foundation and replaced most of the wood siding with reclaimed materials from period buildings, etc. It originally had 3 chimneys , which is amazing , because it's a small house...but 2 were removed when my friend remodeled the place(they were too far gone to rebuild without MEGA-expense). Clearly wood /coal was the sole source of heat back then.

I then bought the house from him and have been here for about 3 years... Fortunately for me, one chimney was still in great shape. So I had it relined ...and Voila!
Wood stove!

The neighborhood has seen better days, but the house is good. and it is situated across from a bird sanctuary on a dead end street. The lot is 99'x 100' ...so even though I am technically in the city...with the woods around and the dead end , it feels more like country up here. LOTS of Deer, Hawks, Rabbits, Lizards, Snakes...
Cincinnati has some very cool architecture. Alot of the buildings have a victorian feel...as that is when many of them were built, but they tend to be very narrow and long front to back...called "shot gun" or "railroad " flats. Also , the city was very heavily influenced by the large numbers of German settlers there were here. We even have a neighborhood downtown called "Over the Rhine" . It's pretty cool.
I'm originally from New York City & then New England...where the turn of the century architecture is much more grand/sprawling. When I moved to Cincinnati, the buildings were one of the first things that struck me.

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