Having determined the size of the fireplace opening and the cross-section area of the flue itself, it will in many cases be found that the latter is too small for the former. The easiest way to remedy this difficulty naturally would be to decrease the size of the opening in the face of the fireplace. In order to check up the diagnosis, however, it would be well to fit a pair of thin boards to wedge fairly tightly into the opening at the top, one of which boards could be drawn down past the other one so that the fireplace opening may be decreased anywhere from six to twelve inches in height—using two six-inch boards. By testing the fireplace in action in this way it will be readily determined by what amount the opening must be decreased. The boards then being removed, a wrought-iron curtain or decorative projecting hood of wrought iron or copper may be fitted permanently to the front.
It is possible, however, that the opening of the fireplace and the flue area are properly related, in which case it may be found that the trouble is due to the lack of a narrow throat and smoke shelf. This too could be constructed in the fireplace without disturbing anything outside, such as the mantel or chimney breast, unless the fireplace is not large enough to permit the addition of four inches of brick at the back. If it is not, it will be well to examine carefully the thickness of the wall at the back of the fireplace and if this is sufficient, part of it could be taken away where the slope of the back joins the upright wall—about a foot above the hearth surface—and the sloping back built in from there up to form the throat. Or, to make perfectly sure of the result, the mantel itself could be removed—this is usually merely nailed to the plaster—and enough of the chimney breast taken down to permit the introduction of a cast-iron throat damper.
FIREPLACE ACCESSORIES
Just as a turkey dinner depends largely for its success upon the “fixin’s,” so the fireplace is in itself incomplete without its andirons and tools. To begin with the most nearly indispensable appurtenances, we must name the andirons—or, if the fuel is to be coal, then the basket grate. I have wondered sometimes why the philosophers have not hit upon the andiron as a particularly fitting subject for pleasurable rumination. There are so few things which combine to such a degree the purely utilitarian with the eminently decorative qualities. Most things which do combine the two in any real measure have been developed on the side of one at the expense of the other quality. Take man’s dress coat, for example, the cut-away front of which, with the two buttons at the back, was designed to permit the gentleman to loop the skirts up to his waist when he mounted his horse. Or, take the modern lighting fixture with its little pan still waiting to catch the drip of the tallow beneath the flame, which has long since been displaced by gas tip or incandescent filament. How few things there are, after all, which ages ago—probably through a long evolution—were designed to meet a real need in the best possible manner and which still meet that need and combine true beauty with their usefulness. The wrought-iron shoe of a horse occurs to us, perhaps a ship’s anchor, a string-bow or an axe helve.
Some support is needed to raise the fuel so that the air may find a clear passage under and through it to the flames, and nothing could well be devised to serve the purpose better than the pair of horizontal wrought bars, each with its single rear foot and its steadying front, the upper continuation of which serves to hold the burning logs in place.
One is not likely to go wrong in making a choice of andirons for any given type of fireplace. The simply turned brass patterns belong so obviously to the Colonial brick opening with its surrounding white woodwork; the rougher wrought-iron types are so evidently at home in the craftsman fireplace or the rough opening of stonework, that misfits are hardly possible.
Fortunately the old brass andirons of Colonial days have proven themselves fitted to survive, and many of them are still to be found in old cobwebby attics or in the more accessible shop of the dealer in antiques. One of these confided to me his way of distinguishing the really old andirons from artificially aged reproductions: the old ones have the turned brass of the front post held in place by a wrought-iron bar that attaches to the horizontal member by a screw thread on the bar itself; on the modern examples this upright bar is drilled with a threaded hole into which an ordinary short screw engages through a hole in the horizontal member.
