Fire Alarms Work!

It's a very comforting feeling knowing that the fire alarms work in your house...before you actually have a fire!

For those of you that have been to the ranch you know we've got a big stone fireplace in our living room. Well Brian is making some modifications to the fireplace so that it will "see through" out into the porch. This way we can use the fire place to heat the porch as well as load the fireplace from the porch side so that we don't have to drag all the wood into the house. It's going to be great once it's done! One step in this process is to have the chimney re-lined since the bricks were falling out of it. (Side note: I guess we had a chimney fire last year and didn't even know it. I guess it happens more then people think and most people don't even know that they've had a chimney fire.) Anyways the fire place company is coming out on Monday to re-line the chimney, but before they come out Brian needed to make some early modifications to the existing fireplace to prep for making it a see-through fire place. Mainly cut the back off the old fireplace box as well as cut the current damper off since he's going to make a new one that's a couple inches bigger. (Don't worry I'm getting to the point about fire alarms....)

So last night Brian brought home the plasma cutter to cut the back of the fireplace box off. The plasma cutter itself isn't very loud, but it needs the air compressor to run, which is extremely loud and on top of that this air compressor has a leak so it basically runs the entire time your using it.

Another side note: I think most of you know that Logan HATES the vacuum cleaner. No idea why, but he HATES it. Even if it's not on, he's still scared if it's even in the same room as him. He's been getting better about it and we can now actually have it sitting out and he won't at least start crying. So you can just about imagine how much he likes the air compressor, which is about 45 times louder than the vacuum cleaner.

So Brian gets set up with everything he needs and starts cutting. The air compressor is running which means I'm holding Cody AND Logan cause Logan's freaking out and thinks the air compressor is an evil monster...which I don't blame him because it's f'ing loud! My job, while Brian is cutting, is to hold the boys, make sure they don't get in the way (which isn't a problem since Logan won't go any where near Daddy when the air compressor's whaling), and watch to make sure no sparks shoot out of the fireplace while Brian's cutting and start the carpet on fire. Sweet! Awesome! So Brian's cutting, the air compressor's roaring, Logan's whining and I'm holding both the boys and watching for spontaneous fires to erupt on the living room carpet....when all of a sudden the fire alarms start going off.

Now don't picture clouds of smoke billowing out of the fireplace filling the house, but instead picture a faint fog of smoke throughout the living room. I guess Brian failed to realize that the house would fill with smoke while he was cutting. And it STUNK! Man did it smell! So Brian tells me to open the windows in the living and dining room and take the boys upstairs so we don't freeze our asses off while he finishes cutting. (I guess he's no longer worried about spontaneous fires erupting on the living room floor cause I now have to go upstairs.)

So every fire alarm in the house is going off, the air compressor, in an effort to be louder than the fire alarms, seems to be roaring even louder than before, Brian's contorted and stuffed himself into the fireplace cutting away and I'm upstairs in Logan's new room trying to hold both Cody and Logan, who's completely confused and thinks the air compressor is going to eat Daddy alive. The best part...this continues for about 10 min!

Eventually the fire alarms did shut off, having the windows open really helped with the smoke...although it still smelled horrible. And after about 20 min Brian was done cutting so we could finally shut off the air compressor as well. Logan was extremely happy when he realized Daddy wasn't eaten by the air compressor and as I said in the beginning of this post I was glad to know that the fire alarms work! It's comforting to know that they could literally wake the dead if there was ever a fire in our house.

There are so many times when I think to myself, I'm so glad I have a husband like Brian that can do things around the house himself without having to hire some expensive company to come in and do it...but usually while he's in the middle of his handy-man jobs around the house and I'm sitting in the bedroom listening to the loudest screeching fire alarms and air compressor holding both of the boys I forget this fact and think to myself...why can't we just hire someone to do this for us?