Please help select soapstone stove/dealer(UPDATE)

SEE POST AT END FOR UPDATE

Hi all,
Well, my hubby is convinced that we need a soapstone stove for our farmhouse out in the country. I liked both Woodstock and Hearthstone stoves, as a compromise. I really wanted a masonry heater, but we need to heat the second story of this house, and can't put a giant foundation there.

He likes the Hearthstone Mansfield, as he beleives we need one this size and he wants to enjoy viewing the fire. I like the pics of the stove online too.

Now, all we need to do is to select a dealer and pick the color of the enamelling. We are in the Columbia river gorge, and hearthstone has two dealers in the portland area, Lisac's and Buck's. I also was reading that some colors look worse as the stove ages, and we want to keep this stove for a long, long time due to it's expense!

I hope that this stove will provide the lion's share of the house heat over the fall/winter/spring season, as we have lots and lots of wood for our use here. (There was a wildfire that went through the area, and we have lots of wood cut, stacked and ready, not to mention many dead trees left standing, waiting to be felled and cut.)

Thanks in advance for your advice! I am so grateful I found this place!

I'll check back in here later.....

Hey thanks Highbeam. I'll go take a look at those pics. Yes, it is soaking us here in the normall dry part of the gorge today. We were so busy taking care of other things that we didn't get this stove selecting/installing done this summer when we should have. Now we'll have to rip out a heatilator fireplace and put in a proper hearth and chimney pipe before we can light the stove.....ugh.

Hi Burn1, Thanks for the link to the Equinox. Very fine looking stove, but I think that would blast us out of the house. We'd get it if we had cathedral ceilings, but we are in a simpler daylight basement rambler type, where we mainly live on the top floor, and downstairs is storage etc. I think that the Heritage might even be sized better, as we do not have 2000 square feet on the floor that we live on, more like 1400 or so, and it's not the open floorplan design....

I like the frou frou with the fancy feet et al. I want something pretty, since I expect to be looking at it for many more decades here at the ranch!

I guess I'll just call both dealers and see who offers me the best deal, etc.

I am now sitting in the wonderful warmth of our Hearthstone Heritage stove. It is not only the most comfortable, gentle heat, but it is also the easiest form of low-tech heating that can be possible. We awake n the morning to coals in the stove, making it really easy to light, then after loading at 7 or so, it heats the home, then after 1:30 I'll add another large split that keeps the home warm till five-ish.

Our previous little cast iron stove required tinkering and fooling around etc. all day. If we didn't have one person at home all day to stoke the stove, we came home to a cold house.

After having this new stove in place for a little less than one month, we can't see how we ever did without it....my husband finally even admits that he really likes the new stove and think it's a smart purchase.....

a happy Tink

Hmmm. Well, I tried to upload a pic, but kept getting this....

Error Message: The file you are attempting to upload has invalid content for its MIME type

So, until I figure this out, we're stuck....