Now My House Smells Like a Campfire

I have always wanted a home with fireplace, and to be honest, I'm still thrilled our new home has not one, but two fireplaces. For the first month we lived here, we had a fire burning in it nearly every night. With the weather slightly warming up, we've cut it back to one or two nights a week. (And because our wood pile is dwindling.)

We planned accordingly and saved enough wood to have a fire going while Grandma was here visiting. There is just something so calming about sitting in front of a fire... After we arrived home from our outing last Saturday, a fire was made upstairs. As soon as it was going, we all decided to go downstairs to work on a puzzle. I thought it was silly to have made a fire upstairs when everyone was downstairs, not able to enjoy it. So the hubs and I agreed to let it burn itself out and we'd just start another one in the basement.

I didn't immediately go help with the puzzle (I really don't like flipping all the pieces over...) so I continued to enjoy the fire as it continued to burn. I can't tell you how many times HD started messing with the doors and the vents, even after my numerous explanations as to why it was fine the way it was.

In an attempt to get him to leave it alone, I had him help me in the kitchen by cutting up some fruit to take downstairs to everyone. He's a sucker for fruit trays and anything that involves cutting. I felt like I was winning my "distract him" plan. As I gathered up the last couple things to take downstairs, I heard him shut the doors to the fireplace, again, which is fine since we were going downstairs. I should have checked.

As I neared the bottom of the stairs, it started smelling a little smokey, but it always smells a little smokey when we have a fire going in the basement. I thought nothing of it and carried on about delivering our snacks. The hubs and I, and Grandma worked on the puzzle for about 10-15 minutes before he was stated, "It just smells really smokey, doesn't it?" Off he went to check it out. Not seconds later though, he was shouting.

Apparently the kiddo, not only closed the doors to the fireplace, but also CLOSED THE FLUE. I don't even know how to do that. But he did it and because the smoke wasn't able to go up and out the chimney, it went out the little vents and filled up the living room, dining room, kitchen, and entryway.

The next several minutes were filled with running around opening windows and setting up fans throughout the upstairs. Despite how smokey it was in here, it didn't take too long to air out - having two large sliding doors really helped with that. Unfortunately though, even though the smoke was gone, the smell was not. I took a shower to rinse the smell off, but Perry did not, so the next morning at church, all we smelled was campfire. Such a great smell... After walking back into the house afterwards, confirmed that we had a lot of scrubbing and clean up to do if it we wanted to rid our house of that dreaded smell.

But hey, we all survived and HD learned a very important lesson about the fireplace. That's a pretty big win right there if you ask me.