Fire???: History 2

The Building Brows

The weather has been keeping us from getting much done. Snow, snow, and more snow. And more to come, too. It's a good time for more history.

...So we now had a $39,000 house worth $56,000 on a small, but highly prized parcel of land bordered by two brooks. It wasn't long before we discovered that my fears were well-founded about something being drastically wrong with the house.

Soon afterward, we found the back porch infested with carpenter ants so badly that we had no choice but to replace all the wood. This meant pouring cement footings to replace the wooden footing that someone had put directly into the ground.

The more we lived there, the more I had a feeling that the threat of a fire hung over our heads. I prayed against it on a regular basis, but had nothing to back up my premonition.

One winter night when we used the wood stove, it was so hot in the room that it started to smell funny. I put my hand on the wall two feet away from the stove pipe. It was burning hot. I smelled the wall and realized the strange smell was paint from the door frame. I opened the two doors in the kitchen for cross-ventilation and prayed. It cooled off within a couple of minutes, but it wasn't until a few years later when we did lead reduction work that I discovered how close it really was.

When the wall later came apart during lead reduction work, we found the stove pipe had been framed with wood so the two materials touched. The inside of the wall was charred. It had been on the verge of bursting into flames and would have if it had gotten any oxygen. And the old knob and tubing part of our electricity ran on was an additional threat.

Only by God's grace did we survive the few years prior to the lead reduction work without enduring a fire.


Coming next: History, Part 3: One-Man Demolition Team