Fireplace Excitement

I know I have been sharing pictures of the work that Aaron and his father have been doing on the house... but I don't think I've really explained the end goal. We currently are using the 'den' as our office. Aaron works from home 2 days a week, and I work from home once a week - so we really need a good place to work. But, this room is also the only room in the house with a fireplace. Directly adjacent to our current office is the room we are re-doing... turning a 3 season porch into a 'real' room. This new 'real' room will be the office, and the old office will now be a den/family room.

The den isn't a big room, but my initial excitement with this remodeling project comes from the fact I was envisioning myself sitting on a cold, wintery day and enjoying the crackle of a fire. But this fireplace was a hotly debated issue, as when we bought the house, we were told that we needed a new liner in the chimney. Since we never really tried to light a fire (hot rooms + several high end computers = big techie geek no-no), we didn't ever explore that option. But, now that the new office room is getting dangerously close to completion - I brought it up again. The initial quote from the guys was $2500 to fix it. We have spent so much on the room already, and still need to get new furniture, I had pretty much resolved myself to not having the fireplace this winter.

This morning, we had the fireplace guy come in and take a look.... and guess what! It's not as big a deal as we thought! We can have a working fireplace for a fraction of what we thought. I'm ridiculously excited about it.

In cycling news, my Managed Care lady called me this morning - she has submitted my paperwork! She talked to the guy that will be reviewing my case, and he is going to put a 'rush' on it. omg omg omg omg omg omg.