My first big sacrifice: Goodbye, woodstove!

I've been trying to work out some more details of my floor plan, and I just couldn't get a woodstove to fit.  So I decided to leave it out.

I love fireplaces, and I love the idea of heating my house with wood.  I love the idea of getting up in the morning, stoking the fire, putting a kettle on and having to wait for it to get hot.

[ASIDE] We all have our own bête noire, some thing that drives us up the wall, that we see as the root of so many problems, and for me that thing is convenience.  I hate how seductive it is, yet corrupting.  It seems so innocent... why should you have to wait for something? have it now.... Convenience is a sales pitch.  Convenience slowly drags us away from the things we could and should do for ourselves, and gives us a cheap facsimile instead. It's most obvious in cooking. Ever notice how unlike a hamburger a Big Mac really is?  That's convenience for you.  Think about what they sell at "convenience stores".  Anything good for you?  No, just the opposite: all the worst shit you can eat is sold at "convenience" stores. You know what convenience is?  Convenience is "Hot Pockets".  If you want to get real, sometimes you have to do things the hard way. Sometimes you have to wait. [/ASIDE]

Yeah, I loved that with a woodstove I'd be forced to wait. It gives you time to think, while you're waiting on a fire to get going and start producing heat.

Plus woodstoves are just hella romantic. People love woodstoves. With a woodstove, I could take my house up north, site it by a lake and live in it all winter long in comfort.  With a woodstove I wouldn't even need electricity.

But, fantasies aside, putting a woodstove in a tiny, tight and well-insulated house presents a lot of problems.  I'd have to punch a hole in my roof for a chimney.  I'd have to plan for adequate air intake.  I'd have to add a carbon monoxide detector.  I'd have to clean a chimney occasionally. I'd have to deal with obtaining and storing enough wood.  I couldn't leave my house unattended for too long without winterizing it.  FYI, I live in Michigan.  We get snow.  Not the worst in the country, but there's a foot and a half on the ground outside right now.  And it's cold.  If my house was finished, and I wasn't heating it, my pipes would freeze and burst.

None of these problems are insurmountable, but when you add them up, that's an awful lot of extra work and expense just because I "like" woodstoves.  But even these problems weren't enough to sway me, I wanted a woodstove!  Until I added the safety clearances and dimensions of the hearth to my model.  The stove itself isn't that big, but not being able to put anything combustible too close to it... I wouldn't have room for the sofa bed.  I tried everything I could think of to make room, and I couldn't find a way to do it. But I need the sofa bed. For when the in-laws visit.  We all have to prioritize, and making room for family to visit is more important to me than a pretty stove.

So, with a heavy heart: open Sketchup, select, delete.  It's done. Goodbye, fantasy stove.  I'll miss you.

[EDIT] Okay, after some more drawing and messing around, I'm giving up on the sofa bed too. Why?  Because it makes the room too crowded.  And it's excessive.  As much as I want to have room for two extra, special overnight guests, we can rough it on those nights. Neither I nor Grampa mind sleeping on cots.  The ladies can have the beds.