Fireplace

Hardwood dried for six months to a year is recommended as the cleanest-burning fuel for fireplaces. Yet faux logs made with petroleum-based wax have been popular for decades. This season, you'll be able to pile manufactured logs in the cart with a clearer conscience: Duraflame is going greener. Duraflame abandoned all use of increasingly expensive petroleum-based waxes this year. The company sells 100 million logs a year, and its new ones are all made with renewable vegetable-based waxes.

For the innovative in an ice storm, life goes on without water, heat and electricity -- but adapting can be a struggle, as some Carroll County families found out.Families in Woodbine were among the more than 350,000 Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. customers who lost power as ice-laden limbs began snapping and falling on utility wires in Central Maryland last week.Still, few anticipated being left in the dark for more than a day.Kelee Norris, a 31-year-old mother of two boys, sure didn't.Her husband, Edward, a Montgomery County firefighter, was halfway to Myrtle Beach, S.C., for a weeklong golf outing on Friday when the lights went out at their home in the 600 block of Hoods Mill Road, a half-mile from the Howard County line.

A couple known for their passion for fixing up their Davidsonville home died late Thursday and the house was destroyed when flames from the fireplace seeped through cracks in the chimney and set the wooden frame ablaze, Anne Arundel County fire officials said.Brian Caney, a computer engineer for the Internal Revenue Service, and his wife, D. Diane Caney, a facilities manager for the U.S. Information Service in Washington, both 54, died at the scene of smoke inhalation and burns, said Battalion Chief John Scholz, fire department spokesman.

Herman Samuel Beck Jr., author of a popular Mount Airy newspaper column and local historian, died Tuesday from complications of Parkinson's disease at his home there. He was 78.Mr. Beck, who was known as "B," began writing "The Way We Were" for the now-defunct Mount Airy News in 1986. He continued writing the colorful column, which was a look back at national and local historical events, until 1995, when his health began to decline."He was a tremendous columnist who was the perfect union of writer and subject matter," said Dave Greenwalt yesterday, JTC former editor and publisher of the Mount Airy News.

Barney Farnham knew that when he retired he'd have to leave Bolton Hill and the 13-room house in which he and his wife, Suzanne, had raised four children.The house, owned by Memorial Episcopal Church, where Farnham was rector for 29 years, would now be home to his successor. Though the couple loved Bolton Hill, they felt putting some distance between themselves and the parish would allow the new rector to have more freedom to make his mark."Yet we also knew we wanted to stay in Baltimore City, but Federal Hill was too expensive," Barney Farnham said.

They don't pick up Christmas trees curbside where we live. Is it OK to burn our tree in the fireplace? It's a Douglas fir.It's fine to burn any real Christmas tree. You can also use your fir twigs and needles for kindling. However, freshly cut softwood species, like spruce, pine and fir, will produce a lot of creosote, which could build up inside your fireplace flue if you burned them all the time. If you decide not to burn your tree, drag it into a wooded area to create a habitat for birds and small animals.

A very crafty momMary Ann McNeely describes herself as a "stay-at-home mom," but out of her Harford County house she has a thriving crafts business going. Her metallic accent pieces are for sale at the Carriage House outside Bel Air. Her charming designs are regularly featured in Arts & Crafts magazine. She sells mail-order do-it-yourself kits. (Call 410-838-1623 for more information.) And by early summer she should finish a how-to book based on her designs, made with aluminum flashing from the hardware store.

It was the ancient fireplace and the ball-and-claw bathtub in the second-floor bathroom that, back in 1986, sold Sharon and Bill Reuter on their Ridgely's Delight house.Of course, off-street parking for two cars, a downtown location, four additional working fireplaces, room for a home office and the couple's ability to see the 1840s house's potential didn't hurt either.And, 12 years after moving in, the two -- both are graphic designers who work out of the house's third-floor -- have just completed a $40,000 renovation to their studio.

Section six has opened at Eldersburg Estates in Eldersburg, where Masonry Macks Homes Inc. is building 210 homes on lots from one-quarter acre to one-half acre.Standard features in the Carroll County community include gas heat and hot water, full basements, six-panel Colonial doors, prewiring for telephone and cable TV, central air conditioning, and public sewer and water.The Hillstead is a 1,823-square-foot Colonial with a front porch and a beginning price of $177,300.The first floor has a foyer, guest closet, 13-by-13-foot living room, 10-by-11-foot dining room, 12-by-11-foot kitchen, powder room, 15-by-11-foot family room and one-car garage.

Masonry Macks Homes Inc. has opened its Manchester model at Essich in Westminster, where the firm is offering 12 floor plans on 1-acre lots. Gas heat and hot water, septic systems and well water are standard features in the Carroll County community.The Manchester starts at $222,800 for 2,220 square feet.On the first floor there are a foyer, 13-by-14-foot living room, powder/mud room, 13-by-11-foot dining room, 15-by-12-foot kitchen with pantry, 19-by-15-foot family room and two-car garage.

The house on Whitehall Creek has a few dozen windows with views of the adjacent water and the treed landscape, but it wasn't always that way. When Allen Durling saw it five years ago, the one-story house didn't have a walk-out lower level either. But he liked what he saw: a modern house in Anne Arundel County, with 850 feet of frontage on the water, and a private deep-water pier and boat lift. "I walked around the house and looked at the water, and I said, 'OK, I'll buy this house,' " Durling said.

We're building a modern-style home that will include a fireplace. It's not the standard kind that's placed against a wall but will instead be situated between the living room and dining room and visible from both. What sort of mantel would be appropriate with such a fireplace? The type of fireplace you're describing is seldom accompanied by any mantel at all. In keeping with its minimalist styling, there are usually no decorative or framing elements around the firebox. Slate, marble and tile are the materials typically used on the surrounding wall.

"We're the s'mores house," says Luke Harlan, referring to his home's fame in the Anneslie community for its outdoor fire pit, with its warm treats and ambience. Every Halloween, the metal fire pit serves as a glowing invitation to costumed youngsters and the rest of the folks in the Baltimore County neighborhood to stop by after trick-or-treating has ended and enjoy gooey sweets, a drink and conversation with Luke and Liz Harlan. "When they come back, they could take a stick, roast a marshmallow and make a s'more," says Luke Harlan, president of the Anneslie Community Association.

My living room has the sort of contemporary style seen in many interior-design magazines. It's gotten kind of boring, however, and now I'd like to introduce a couple of different-looking pieces. I'm thinking of substituting a pair of love seats for the two lounge chairs that now flank the fireplace. But would seating pieces of that sort look too heavy in the middle of the room? Wouldn't they cut off the view of the fireplace from other chairs? It's actually pretty common to situate love seats on either side of a fireplace in a spacious room.

I have seen flat-screen TVs above fire- places numerous times. The salespeople at the leading electronics stores insist that this arrangement is fine for the TV. But they sell TVs for a living. Does the heat from the fireplace harm a plasma or LCD TV? - Bob Richards Bob, I would not mount a TV above a fireplace. That doesn't mean the heat would definitely cause harm. But the possibility seems real enough for it not to make sense to take a chance. Plasma TVs already run a bit hot (LCDs run cooler)

A master suite with a sitting room would be a desirable feature in any house. But what if there were four master suites - in the same house? That's the embarrassment of riches in this Tudor-style house sitting on more than 2 acres in Harford County. Four of the five bedrooms are on the upper level; each spacious bedroom has its own adjoining seating area - some with fireplace - and its own bathroom. "It's not a cookie-cutter house," says owner John G. Berger. "It's unique." Berger, who has owned the property for about four years, has overseen many of the renovations, including transforming a deck into a sunroom, upgrading the floors to a deep-red mahogany and refacing the kitchen cabinets.

Allison Severance grew up on a farm in Howard County. So when she and her husband, Rick Henry, began looking for a house, her childhood experience helped shape the search: It had to be special; it had to possess charm; and it couldn't be new. They found it over the mountains in Searchwell Farm, built circa 1800 in the Washington County town of Boonsboro. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the farmhouse, along with five outbuildings, was built of limestone by Germans who migrated south from Pennsylvania through the Cumberland Valley.

What makes a bar a winter hangout? It must have a fireplace. A fully stoked fireplace -- not one of those slick imitation gas logs. Dark wood and worn brick must be everywhere inside. And this wood and brick must be dimly lit and adorned with eye-catching trinkets and frames. Hot food is also necessary, as are cold beer and warm, friendly service. For me, one bar fits that bill better than any other: the Wharf Rat in Fells Point. The Rat is always first on my list of cold-weather drinking holes.

If you're getting a chill despite the money you're throwing at Baltimore Gas and Electric, it's probably high time to winterize your home. Here's the good news: You can do some of it yourself. Check for cold spots, advises David Lupberger, the home improvement expert for ServiceMagic, which connects homeowners with prescreened contractors. If you find drafts around your doors, you can buy a simple weatherstripping kit to reduce the airflow, he says. You can weatherstrip drafty windows, too. The U.S. Department of Energy discusses weatherstripping and other energy-efficiency tips here: eere.

We want to include a fireplace in the family room of a vacation home we're building in the mountains. Can you offer some suggestions regarding that particular element as well as the overall design, which we envision as strongly rustic. Fireplaces were originally all about function, but today they're valued at least as much for their charm as for the warmth they generate. Everyone wants a fireplace. And while it's neither easy nor inexpensive to install one in an existing space, such an addition can be successful as long as potential problems are identified and addressed.