November 2, 2024 • 18 mins
Dean is talking all things fireplaces. Do you need / want one for actual use for heat, or do you want one just for looks? Either way, Dean tackles the details and questions you need to know about how to install, use and care for a fireplace whether it’s a wood burning fireplace or a gas or electric one, the rules in place for fireplaces, (especially in California) and did you know that having one could actually be beneficial for your health? It’s true!
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
KFI AM six forty. You're listening to Dean Sharp, the
House Whisper on demand on the iHeartRadio app KFI AM
six forty Live everywhere in HD on the iHeartRadio App. Hey,
welcome to home Where. Every week we help you better
(00:22):
understand that place where you live. I am Dean Sharp,
the house Whisperer, custom home builder, custom home designer, and
most importantly today, your guide to transforming your ordinary house
into an extraordinary home and talk about needing guidance. Today
we're going to be talking about now that we've rounded
(00:45):
the corner into the holidays. It's the very first Saturday,
very first weekend in November. Halloween just behind us, now,
nothing but holidays before us. The weather is shifting everywhere,
a little bit everywhere, a lot in some places. The
(01:05):
point is this, we're gonna be talking about fireplaces today.
Fireplaces are emblematic, they are nostalgic, They can be practical.
They are often problematic when it comes to your home
because of furniture layouts, all sorts of stuff like that,
and making the most of a fireplace that you've got
(01:27):
all of it. We're going to try and discuss today
to help you understand your fireplace better, making a place
for your fireplace. That's what we're calling today's show. And
of course we're going to take some calls. And when
we take calls, we take calls about anything that you
want to talk about regarding your home. You set the agenda.
It can be a construction question, a design question, DIY,
(01:51):
whatever the case may be. Or you can call me
and talk about your fireplace, whatever you want to talk about,
whatever is scratching your head regarding your home. I'm here
to help you through it. The number to reach me
eight three three two. Ask Dean A three three the
numeral two ask Dean eight three three to ask Dean.
(02:11):
The phone lines are open, Yes now, yes they are.
And producer Michelle Cube standing by ready to take your calls.
And if we do all of this right, we're gonna
bring some light into your morning, even though it's gonna
be dark outside, and we're gonna make you feel glad
that you were here. The team is here for you.
(02:32):
Sam is on the board wrangling our live studio audience.
There they are, those crazy kids. Good morning Sam, Good
morning Dean. How you doing. I am exhausted. I stayed
up way too late last night, but I'm on my
eighteenth cup of coffee, and so as a result, you
know what, things are looking pretty good at the moment
(02:54):
when the Dodger hangover, doing real real well for you.
Huh uh oh, my goodness. Glad to have you with
us as always, Sam as I mentioned producer Michelle Cube,
the legendary Michelle Cube. I wish she was near mic
right now, but she is busy standing by to take
your calls. The number again eight three three two. Ask Dean,
(03:17):
give us a call, even if you just want to
talk to Michelle. She's ready, all right, KF I am
six forty live streaming live like I'm here for real
NHD everywhere on the iHeartRadio app our Apologies. We had
a technical glitch, actually a little power outage that messed
(03:38):
up some of our computer systems, so we lost the
ability to connect. And we're back. I'm not going to
go into it technology, right, it's great until it's not,
and then it's great again. So we're here. If you
were listening right at the top of the show and
you're like, I thought Dean was going to talk about fireplaces,
and then we just took a right turn and abandoned
(03:58):
the whole thing. No, we didn't. We just had to
run a little fill And now we're here. All right,
we're talking fireplaces today. Plus we're going to be going
to the phones taking your call. Let me give you
the number eight three three two ask Dean. Yes, I'm
really here. Eight three three the numeral to ask dean.
(04:19):
Producer Michelle is standing by, ready to take your call.
Anything you want to talk about regarding your home today,
anything at all, construction diy, you know, design questions, anything
that you're scratching your head about about your home. We'll
put our heads together. I'm here to help. That's our
goal here. Okay, let's dive in and get to where
(04:43):
I wanted to go about a half an hour ago.
The fireplace, you know how, is a fireplace kind of
like an appendix. I like always starting fireplace shows with
this question. It's it's here's how. It's kind of a
vestigial organ for a house from a homes When you
think about it, it's inefficient, it's outdated. Some people are like,
(05:06):
why do we even have this thing? That's how. It's
like an appendix. Right, It's no longer needed to cook
food on to light a room or to keep most
most houses warm unless you have a mountain cabin, and
you know, and everybody knows that story. But generally speaking,
the vast majority of human beings here in North America
(05:29):
are not fireplace dependent homes. And yet there they are,
right and for good reason, because a fireplace is so
iconically the former center the very heart of a home. Right.
In fact, it was so central to all things home
that you know that came with the phrase a hearth
(05:51):
and home. Hearth and home inseparable, right, because this is
the warmth, this is the source of food, and so
on and so forth. So most people these days can
be divided into two clear camps. People who are sick
and tired their fireplace and want to get rid of
it or wish they could. Other people who don't know
(06:14):
what to do with it but really like the idea.
And so there we are. Most people also don't use
their fireplace. I would say upwards of seventy percent of
homeowners with a fireplace never touch the thing, and so
it just sits there. I'd like to change that, and
I'll tell you why. I think the idea of fire
(06:37):
is powerful magic for human beings. As a designer. I
love it as somebody who encourages you and coaches you
to build a beautiful home. I love fire, fire and water,
the two most natural elements that just kind of creep
into our souls as human beings. We are simply evolved
(07:02):
to be a part of it. So I don't like
the idea of purging fire from a home, open flame
or the flame effect because of all the benefits that
it has on us, just psychologically and emotionally. A couple
of things you need to know about those benefits, those
things that are physically ingrained in us. Now. Eighteen hundred
(07:26):
K what does that mean? Eighteen hundred K. That is
a color temperature, not heat temperature, but color temperature of
lights and things like that. You've heard me talk about
this on lighting, Like three thousand K is a bright light,
not really blue tinted, not really amber. If you get
below three thousand K three thousand kelvin, then light begins
(07:51):
to warm up and go amber. If you get above it,
it starts to go bluish and kind of weird toward daylight,
which is five thousand K. Well, fire, the color temperature
of open flame, whether be it a fireplace or a
candle burning is eighteen hundred K. It is the magic
color temperature. And I say magic because at eighteen hundred
(08:15):
K that dancing light decreases blood pressure, relaxes muscles. And
I don't mean from the heat, I just mean from
your visual perception of it. You become calmer and more sociable.
This is from millions of years of gathering around the
fire with your tribe to tell stories, to eat food,
(08:37):
and to be safe at night in the dark. Fire
light's a limited area which creates what we would call
an intimacy zone. In other words, that light itself creates
a little zone that becomes a room unto itself. Bright flames, crackling,
dancing rhythmically against the dark background holds your attention and
(09:00):
they induce a state of mild hypnosis. This is true.
And this is not just me saying this because I
like fire. This is the actually the results of a
study at the University of Alabama that hooking people's brains
up and monitoring them as they go a mild state
(09:20):
of hypnosis induced by staring at the bright flames of
a crackling fire, and when pupils dilate in soft light,
faces become evolutionarily more attractive, which you know, the whole
idea of a candle light dinner that is not just
a novelty, that is a really really good way to
(09:44):
feel sexy about the person who's sitting across the table
from you, large dilated pupils in eighteen hundred K candlelight.
So for all of these reasons and more, the fireplace
is something if we can keep it present, irve it
perfect it, utilize it, and make it work for you,
(10:04):
is worth keeping. Worth keeping. Absolutely not always in the
same place, which is hard news that I have to
break to people occasionally, but to have a fireplace in
your home, not necessarily to heat the house, but to
warm your soul, well worth it, all right. So when
we come back, let's talk about some of the rules
(10:25):
for fireplaces, especially in the state of California, because of
all states, we've got the most rules in regards to
open wood fires and such. We'll talk about those rules,
those limitations, and then I'm going to start giving you
tips as to how to decode, interpret, and understand your
fireplace better. All of this and more.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from
KFI AM six forty Kfi.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Dean Jarp the House Whisper. Welcome home on this dark,
cool what looks to be a lovely November two, twenty
twenty four, the first weekend in November. The weather is changing,
even though you know, it's not as cold as some
people want to be. For some of you, it is.
(11:16):
For those of you who are listening outside of southern California,
almost undoubtedly it is. But regardless, the weather has definitely
taken a turn, and many of us are starting to
think maybe it's time to snuggle up and start getting
a little cozy next to the fireplace. So we're talking
fireplaces this morning, giving you some pearls to understand the
(11:39):
fireplace that you've got in your home. All right, I'm
going to give you something that nobody's ever talked to
you about before. Right now, I'm going to help you
decode exactly where that fireplace really starts and stops so
that you could understand what your possibilities are in refacing it.
(11:59):
Probably the majority of folks who have a fireplace in
their home and actually want to do something with it
are looking to change out the mantle, change out the
brickwork around the outside of the fireplace, or they've got
some funky stone work or some lava rock or something that,
you know, whatever the case may be, that they're just
(12:19):
like Hugh, I wish I could get rid of that thing. Well,
here's the good news. You probably can't. And it's probably
not as involved as you think. Because the fireplace itself
the structural fireplace, and I'm talking about a masonry fireplace.
If you have a prefabricated fireplace, we'll talk about that
in just a couple of minutes. But a structural masonry fireplace,
(12:44):
one that's made out of brick and block and concrete
and so on. The wall line. Take a look at
the actual wall line, not the build up of the fireplace,
but where the wall is itself. Ninety nine percent of
stroke uctual masonry fireplaces, the real fireplace that you don't
want to touch or mess with, starts right flush with
(13:09):
that wall line, right where your dry wall and studs are.
That's how they were built. Now you can verify this
what you do. Don't have a fire burning when you
do this. But what you can do is grab a
little flashlight and get down on your hands and knees
and pop your head just a little bit inside that
firebox and look up at the very top of the firebox.
(13:30):
There will be a large piece of steel. It's usually
about four to six inches wide. It's an L to
piece of L steel L metal. You can't see the
L because the L is running up the wall, but
you can see the bottom of it. Okay, that piece
of steel is the lentil. The lentil. It is the
structural header kind of like over a doorway, because that
(13:52):
firebox is a sort of a doorway, right. That lentil
marks the front of it marks the beginning of the real,
actual structural firebox. Now what does that mean. It means
this everything outside that lentil into the room from the
front edge of that lentil forward. Everything that's there is optional.
(14:16):
Everything beyond it is a veneer. I don't care if
it looks like it's built like a tank out of
brick that runs from Florida ceiling. It is veneer, and
veneer means that it could all come down. It can
all come down in a couple of hours without touching
and having anything to do with the structural fireplace itself
(14:38):
or the firebox. Okay, so the edges of the firebox
as they wrap out towards the room at the top
will terminate in this lentil and where the front of
that steel is, that's the end of the structural firebox.
And you can take off relatively easily everything outside of it.
That usually means taking everything off and flushing it down
(15:00):
the wall, which means you can start from scratch, which
means you can get rid of the old mantle. You
can get rid of the nineteen eighties whatever that's going
on there, or the old broken up brick or the
filthy brick, and start again with other veneer. We can
go up with our own stone, our own tiles surround
the sky is the limit, and we have cleared the
(15:20):
decks for a brand new design for the front of
that fireplace as it relates to the decor and the
design inside the room. And again we are not touching
the structural firebox at all. Now this is doubly true
if you have a prefabricated fireplace, a not a masonry fireplace,
(15:43):
and a lot of people I'm still surprised how many
people don't realize they have one of these. But here's
the thing again, no fire in the firebox. Take a
look inside and you see instead of up above. Instead
of seeing bricks leading up into a metal damper, you
just see a lot of sheet metal. And the actual
quote unquote a firebox brick line I'm using air quotes
(16:07):
for bricks, is actually three panels, a back panel and
two side panels that are stamped to look like bricks.
They're made out of a high heat concrete. They're called
refractory panels. And if you find that you've got oh yeah,
look at that. It jiggles a little bit when I
tap on it. Then what you've got there is a
prefabricated fireplace, which is essentially a sheet metal appliance. And
(16:32):
again with those, the rules stay just as true. In fact,
with those you have even more options because not only
could you remove all the veneer that goes right to
the flush wall, you might even be able to create
some recesses in that wall above, because all that's coming
out of the top of that firebox there is likely
(16:55):
a ten or twelve inch stainless steel pipe that is
running up a flue pipe running up inside a wood
chase or stuccoed chimney up to the roof. There's a
lot of space in there. Now, you can't touch that thing.
You can't push anything combustible right up against it. You
can come within a couple of inches of it on
all sides and have lots of options when it comes
(17:16):
to the framing work around those fireplaces. Not to mention
the fact that a fireplace like that can actually be moved.
It can be raised, it can be lowered because it
weighs when you remove all the stuff around it, about
the same amount actually less than a gas dryer. Yeah,
it is a lightweight sheet metal appliance, and it can
(17:39):
be moved around. It can be raised up in the
room so it's more visible, it can be lowered, whatever
the case may be. So there you go. One of
the biggest tips for a major change of the firebox
and the fireplace is understanding where the real firebox stops
and where the veneer begins. Remember only heard it here.
(18:00):
All right, We're going to pick this conversation up again,
but we're at the top of the hour, so when
we come back, I'm going to take a call or two.
All right, you're Home with Dean Sharp, the house Whisper
on KFI.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from
KFI AM six forty
KFI AM six forty. You're listening to Dean Sharp, the
House Whisper on demand on the iHeartRadio app KFI AM
six forty Live everywhere in HD on the iHeartRadio App. Hey,
welcome to home Where. Every week we help you better
(00:22):
understand that place where you live. I am Dean Sharp,
the house Whisperer, custom home builder, custom home designer, and
most importantly today, your guide to transforming your ordinary house
into an extraordinary home and talk about needing guidance. Today
we're going to be talking about now that we've rounded
(00:45):
the corner into the holidays. It's the very first Saturday,
very first weekend in November. Halloween just behind us, now,
nothing but holidays before us. The weather is shifting everywhere,
a little bit everywhere, a lot in some places. The
(01:05):
point is this, we're gonna be talking about fireplaces today.
Fireplaces are emblematic, they are nostalgic, They can be practical.
They are often problematic when it comes to your home
because of furniture layouts, all sorts of stuff like that,
and making the most of a fireplace that you've got
(01:27):
all of it. We're going to try and discuss today
to help you understand your fireplace better, making a place
for your fireplace. That's what we're calling today's show. And
of course we're going to take some calls. And when
we take calls, we take calls about anything that you
want to talk about regarding your home. You set the agenda.
It can be a construction question, a design question, DIY,
(01:51):
whatever the case may be. Or you can call me
and talk about your fireplace, whatever you want to talk about,
whatever is scratching your head regarding your home. I'm here
to help you through it. The number to reach me
eight three three two. Ask Dean A three three the
numeral two ask Dean eight three three to ask Dean.
(02:11):
The phone lines are open, Yes now, yes they are.
And producer Michelle Cube standing by ready to take your calls.
And if we do all of this right, we're gonna
bring some light into your morning, even though it's gonna
be dark outside, and we're gonna make you feel glad
that you were here. The team is here for you.
(02:32):
Sam is on the board wrangling our live studio audience.
There they are, those crazy kids. Good morning Sam, Good
morning Dean. How you doing. I am exhausted. I stayed
up way too late last night, but I'm on my
eighteenth cup of coffee, and so as a result, you
know what, things are looking pretty good at the moment
(02:54):
when the Dodger hangover, doing real real well for you.
Huh uh oh, my goodness. Glad to have you with
us as always, Sam as I mentioned producer Michelle Cube,
the legendary Michelle Cube. I wish she was near mic
right now, but she is busy standing by to take
your calls. The number again eight three three two. Ask Dean,
(03:17):
give us a call, even if you just want to
talk to Michelle. She's ready, all right, KF I am
six forty live streaming live like I'm here for real
NHD everywhere on the iHeartRadio app our Apologies. We had
a technical glitch, actually a little power outage that messed
(03:38):
up some of our computer systems, so we lost the
ability to connect. And we're back. I'm not going to
go into it technology, right, it's great until it's not,
and then it's great again. So we're here. If you
were listening right at the top of the show and
you're like, I thought Dean was going to talk about fireplaces,
and then we just took a right turn and abandoned
(03:58):
the whole thing. No, we didn't. We just had to
run a little fill And now we're here. All right,
we're talking fireplaces today. Plus we're going to be going
to the phones taking your call. Let me give you
the number eight three three two ask Dean. Yes, I'm
really here. Eight three three the numeral to ask dean.
(04:19):
Producer Michelle is standing by, ready to take your call.
Anything you want to talk about regarding your home today,
anything at all, construction diy, you know, design questions, anything
that you're scratching your head about about your home. We'll
put our heads together. I'm here to help. That's our
goal here. Okay, let's dive in and get to where
(04:43):
I wanted to go about a half an hour ago.
The fireplace, you know how, is a fireplace kind of
like an appendix. I like always starting fireplace shows with
this question. It's it's here's how. It's kind of a
vestigial organ for a house from a homes When you
think about it, it's inefficient, it's outdated. Some people are like,
(05:06):
why do we even have this thing? That's how. It's
like an appendix. Right, It's no longer needed to cook
food on to light a room or to keep most
most houses warm unless you have a mountain cabin, and
you know, and everybody knows that story. But generally speaking,
the vast majority of human beings here in North America
(05:29):
are not fireplace dependent homes. And yet there they are,
right and for good reason, because a fireplace is so
iconically the former center the very heart of a home. Right.
In fact, it was so central to all things home
that you know that came with the phrase a hearth
(05:51):
and home. Hearth and home inseparable, right, because this is
the warmth, this is the source of food, and so
on and so forth. So most people these days can
be divided into two clear camps. People who are sick
and tired their fireplace and want to get rid of
it or wish they could. Other people who don't know
(06:14):
what to do with it but really like the idea.
And so there we are. Most people also don't use
their fireplace. I would say upwards of seventy percent of
homeowners with a fireplace never touch the thing, and so
it just sits there. I'd like to change that, and
I'll tell you why. I think the idea of fire
(06:37):
is powerful magic for human beings. As a designer. I
love it as somebody who encourages you and coaches you
to build a beautiful home. I love fire, fire and water,
the two most natural elements that just kind of creep
into our souls as human beings. We are simply evolved
(07:02):
to be a part of it. So I don't like
the idea of purging fire from a home, open flame
or the flame effect because of all the benefits that
it has on us, just psychologically and emotionally. A couple
of things you need to know about those benefits, those
things that are physically ingrained in us. Now. Eighteen hundred
(07:26):
K what does that mean? Eighteen hundred K. That is
a color temperature, not heat temperature, but color temperature of
lights and things like that. You've heard me talk about
this on lighting, Like three thousand K is a bright light,
not really blue tinted, not really amber. If you get
below three thousand K three thousand kelvin, then light begins
(07:51):
to warm up and go amber. If you get above it,
it starts to go bluish and kind of weird toward daylight,
which is five thousand K. Well, fire, the color temperature
of open flame, whether be it a fireplace or a
candle burning is eighteen hundred K. It is the magic
color temperature. And I say magic because at eighteen hundred
(08:15):
K that dancing light decreases blood pressure, relaxes muscles. And
I don't mean from the heat, I just mean from
your visual perception of it. You become calmer and more sociable.
This is from millions of years of gathering around the
fire with your tribe to tell stories, to eat food,
(08:37):
and to be safe at night in the dark. Fire
light's a limited area which creates what we would call
an intimacy zone. In other words, that light itself creates
a little zone that becomes a room unto itself. Bright flames, crackling,
dancing rhythmically against the dark background holds your attention and
(09:00):
they induce a state of mild hypnosis. This is true.
And this is not just me saying this because I
like fire. This is the actually the results of a
study at the University of Alabama that hooking people's brains
up and monitoring them as they go a mild state
(09:20):
of hypnosis induced by staring at the bright flames of
a crackling fire, and when pupils dilate in soft light,
faces become evolutionarily more attractive, which you know, the whole
idea of a candle light dinner that is not just
a novelty, that is a really really good way to
(09:44):
feel sexy about the person who's sitting across the table
from you, large dilated pupils in eighteen hundred K candlelight.
So for all of these reasons and more, the fireplace
is something if we can keep it present, irve it
perfect it, utilize it, and make it work for you,
(10:04):
is worth keeping. Worth keeping. Absolutely not always in the
same place, which is hard news that I have to
break to people occasionally, but to have a fireplace in
your home, not necessarily to heat the house, but to
warm your soul, well worth it, all right. So when
we come back, let's talk about some of the rules
(10:25):
for fireplaces, especially in the state of California, because of
all states, we've got the most rules in regards to
open wood fires and such. We'll talk about those rules,
those limitations, and then I'm going to start giving you
tips as to how to decode, interpret, and understand your
fireplace better. All of this and more.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from
KFI AM six forty Kfi.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Dean Jarp the House Whisper. Welcome home on this dark,
cool what looks to be a lovely November two, twenty
twenty four, the first weekend in November. The weather is changing,
even though you know, it's not as cold as some
people want to be. For some of you, it is.
(11:16):
For those of you who are listening outside of southern California,
almost undoubtedly it is. But regardless, the weather has definitely
taken a turn, and many of us are starting to
think maybe it's time to snuggle up and start getting
a little cozy next to the fireplace. So we're talking
fireplaces this morning, giving you some pearls to understand the
(11:39):
fireplace that you've got in your home. All right, I'm
going to give you something that nobody's ever talked to
you about before. Right now, I'm going to help you
decode exactly where that fireplace really starts and stops so
that you could understand what your possibilities are in refacing it.
(11:59):
Probably the majority of folks who have a fireplace in
their home and actually want to do something with it
are looking to change out the mantle, change out the
brickwork around the outside of the fireplace, or they've got
some funky stone work or some lava rock or something that,
you know, whatever the case may be, that they're just
(12:19):
like Hugh, I wish I could get rid of that thing. Well,
here's the good news. You probably can't. And it's probably
not as involved as you think. Because the fireplace itself
the structural fireplace, and I'm talking about a masonry fireplace.
If you have a prefabricated fireplace, we'll talk about that
in just a couple of minutes. But a structural masonry fireplace,
(12:44):
one that's made out of brick and block and concrete
and so on. The wall line. Take a look at
the actual wall line, not the build up of the fireplace,
but where the wall is itself. Ninety nine percent of
stroke uctual masonry fireplaces, the real fireplace that you don't
want to touch or mess with, starts right flush with
(13:09):
that wall line, right where your dry wall and studs are.
That's how they were built. Now you can verify this
what you do. Don't have a fire burning when you
do this. But what you can do is grab a
little flashlight and get down on your hands and knees
and pop your head just a little bit inside that
firebox and look up at the very top of the firebox.
(13:30):
There will be a large piece of steel. It's usually
about four to six inches wide. It's an L to
piece of L steel L metal. You can't see the
L because the L is running up the wall, but
you can see the bottom of it. Okay, that piece
of steel is the lentil. The lentil. It is the
structural header kind of like over a doorway, because that
(13:52):
firebox is a sort of a doorway, right. That lentil
marks the front of it marks the beginning of the real,
actual structural firebox. Now what does that mean. It means
this everything outside that lentil into the room from the
front edge of that lentil forward. Everything that's there is optional.
(14:16):
Everything beyond it is a veneer. I don't care if
it looks like it's built like a tank out of
brick that runs from Florida ceiling. It is veneer, and
veneer means that it could all come down. It can
all come down in a couple of hours without touching
and having anything to do with the structural fireplace itself
(14:38):
or the firebox. Okay, so the edges of the firebox
as they wrap out towards the room at the top
will terminate in this lentil and where the front of
that steel is, that's the end of the structural firebox.
And you can take off relatively easily everything outside of it.
That usually means taking everything off and flushing it down
(15:00):
the wall, which means you can start from scratch, which
means you can get rid of the old mantle. You
can get rid of the nineteen eighties whatever that's going
on there, or the old broken up brick or the
filthy brick, and start again with other veneer. We can
go up with our own stone, our own tiles surround
the sky is the limit, and we have cleared the
(15:20):
decks for a brand new design for the front of
that fireplace as it relates to the decor and the
design inside the room. And again we are not touching
the structural firebox at all. Now this is doubly true
if you have a prefabricated fireplace, a not a masonry fireplace,
(15:43):
and a lot of people I'm still surprised how many
people don't realize they have one of these. But here's
the thing again, no fire in the firebox. Take a
look inside and you see instead of up above. Instead
of seeing bricks leading up into a metal damper, you
just see a lot of sheet metal. And the actual
quote unquote a firebox brick line I'm using air quotes
(16:07):
for bricks, is actually three panels, a back panel and
two side panels that are stamped to look like bricks.
They're made out of a high heat concrete. They're called
refractory panels. And if you find that you've got oh yeah,
look at that. It jiggles a little bit when I
tap on it. Then what you've got there is a
prefabricated fireplace, which is essentially a sheet metal appliance. And
(16:32):
again with those, the rules stay just as true. In fact,
with those you have even more options because not only
could you remove all the veneer that goes right to
the flush wall, you might even be able to create
some recesses in that wall above, because all that's coming
out of the top of that firebox there is likely
(16:55):
a ten or twelve inch stainless steel pipe that is
running up a flue pipe running up inside a wood
chase or stuccoed chimney up to the roof. There's a
lot of space in there. Now, you can't touch that thing.
You can't push anything combustible right up against it. You
can come within a couple of inches of it on
all sides and have lots of options when it comes
(17:16):
to the framing work around those fireplaces. Not to mention
the fact that a fireplace like that can actually be moved.
It can be raised, it can be lowered because it
weighs when you remove all the stuff around it, about
the same amount actually less than a gas dryer. Yeah,
it is a lightweight sheet metal appliance, and it can
(17:39):
be moved around. It can be raised up in the
room so it's more visible, it can be lowered, whatever
the case may be. So there you go. One of
the biggest tips for a major change of the firebox
and the fireplace is understanding where the real firebox stops
and where the veneer begins. Remember only heard it here.
(18:00):
All right, We're going to pick this conversation up again,
but we're at the top of the hour, so when
we come back, I'm going to take a call or two.
All right, you're Home with Dean Sharp, the house Whisper
on KFI.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from
KFI AM six forty
Home with Dean Sharp News
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Special Summer Offer: Exclusively on Apple Podcasts, try our Dateline Premium subscription completely free for one month! With Dateline Premium, you get every episode ad-free plus exclusive bonus content.