Making a Fireplace

by Henry H. Saylor

The modern home along Colonial lines is perhaps the commonest problem, and incidentally the easiest, for the old models of delicately detailed white-painted wood mantels are so well known and so universally admired that modern reproductions along good lines and reasonable cost are easily obtained.

For the English plaster or half-timber house the architect will doubtless design a special mantel, in scale and in harmony with the dark paneling and other architectural woodwork, probably with a paneled over-mantel if the cost is not too rigorously held down.

In a house which breaks away from the historic architectural styles, as so many of the stucco buildings of the day do, the mantel treatment offers particularly interesting possibilities. Frequently the mantel is done away with entirely and the chimney breast treated independently as a whole.

With the very informal type of summer home where a rough stone for facing and chimney is employed, the mantel treatment can hardly be kept too simple and unobtrusive in its rugged strength. A heavy log, planed to a smooth top surface and resting on two projecting stone brackets, is frequently used with good effect. The chimney breast may be stepped back at the shelf height to form a narrow stone ledge, or the breast left without any shelf. Many simple variations with the informal brick chimney breast will occur to everyone. In general, with these summer shacks or bungalows, the fireplace is the chief architectural feature of the living-room and for that reason will stand a moderate amount of embellishment, but this latter should take the form of a slightly better finish of the materials used throughout the room rather than the introduction of more elaborate and costly ones.

MENDING POOR FIREPLACES

It is well enough to say just how a fireplace should be built so that it will work satisfactorily, but that does not go far in helping the man who has a fireplace that will not work. Frequently it is possible without any very great expense and trouble to correct a fireplace that has been improperly built. If one has in mind a clear comprehension of the few elementary principles of fireplace construction it will usually be an easy matter to determine the reason why a fireplace smokes or fails to draw.

The cross-section area of the flue is likely to prove the most common difficulty. Usually this cannot be seen from inside the fireplace, because of the narrow throat and the smoke chamber which in some form may be above the shelf. If, therefore, the apparent essentials—such as shape of opening, narrow throat across the whole width, and preferably the slanting back—have been followed out it would be well to determine the area of the flue itself. To do this it will be necessary to reach the top of the chimney and, by lowering a weight on a line, find which flue leads to the fireplace in question. Its area at the top will in all probability be its area throughout. If the flue happens to be the only one in that particular chimney it may sometimes be determined more easily by counting the bricks in its two horizontal directions and in this way estimating what would probably be the inside flue. This conclusion is by no means sure, however, since the chimney may be built with eight-inch walls or it may be simply a four-inch wall with the flue lining. To one with a knowledge of bricklaying, however, the way in which the chimney is laid up will usually indicate the size of the flue.