A Place For The Fireplace – Hour 1

into an extraordinary home and talk about needing guidance. Today we're going to be talking about now that we've rounded 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 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 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, 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. 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. 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 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, 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 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 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. 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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, 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 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 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 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, 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 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.

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 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.

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 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, 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 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. 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 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. 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 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 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 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, 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 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

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 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 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 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.

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.