Your woodstove is much newer than 1977, probably at least 7-12 years newer. (I'm irresistably tempted to gently tease you about your sense of "stepping back into a time warp" - you're here on the Old House Forum so a house built in 1977 is barely out of warranty by our standards. My own house was built many years before 1877.) I think we bought our stove in the first year the model was available and I suspect that was 1983 or possibly as late as 1985. We have another similar, but slightly newer, model with putty-colored enamel (which hasn't stood the test of hard use nearly as well as the black, unenameled orginal one). We burned the putty coloreed one for a few years but went back to the black one. It has been completely rebuilt a few times in the last 30 years! The catalytic converter ought to be replaced very few years (ours are done after about 2.5 burning seasons, but we put a lot of wood through it.) If you believe it has never been done, then I would plan on buying a new one, though keeping the old one on hand in case you have a problem with the new one sometime and want to stick something in to tide you over. Store the old very carefully as they extremely delicate. Don't do as I did once, vacuum the fly ash off, and sucked the whole thing into the vac: a $250 oops! Nowadays the cats are made in China with very mixed quality control. The cat part itself will cost $250-$350, exclusive of labor to install. We replace ours by ourselves. Does your stove have a heat shield on the back - a metal panel that stands off the main body of the stove about 1.5"? Since it's backed by a masonry wall, it may not be necessary. At any rate if had one, you'd have to take it off, and then remove the panel in the upper back to expose the cat chamber if your stove is an older model; slightly newer ones are accessed in a different way. You can find your model number on a plate on the back of the stove near the bottom (on right, I think). It's important info to know because there were slight changes to the model over time. The operating instructions are still online, I believe.(VermontCastings.com) The company has had a somewhat checkered ownership history with some periods producing less desirable work. Your stove definitely is a catalytic model because I can see the handle on the left of the stove which is what you use to change the exhaust pathway from a direct exhaust to going through the catalytic pathway after the stove has come to proper temp for lighting-off the secondary fire in the cat. If you haven't used it yet I would suggest a thorough looking-over by a competent sweep, preferably one used to or selling Vermont Castings stoves. Replace cat as recommended. Also have him look at all the weatherstripping around the doors (front, ash pan access and top load). These parts get worn out over time, and are easily replaceable. Also, be sure to double-check before burning that there is an ashpan under the stove(not just an empty slot where it lives). Open the ash door at the bottom right (having slid sheets of newsprint under the stove and floor in front of the hearth in case it is over-filled and will dump ashes around). There should be a shallow trapezoidal pan riding in the framework attached to the back of the ash door that can be lifted out and dumped when full. There is a removeable (perhaps lost) black metal cover that slides on the pan to contain the ashes and hot coals for transport to the dumping site; it's not strictly necessary, but nice. (Again a set of high-temp fire fighters' gloves - blue Fire-Dex - will help you here.) Now, just in case you are not experienced wood burners, I need to emphasize this CRITICAL point. Do not dump the ashes in anything except a metal, closeable trash can that is set outside, away from the house, preferably on a stone slab, but at least never within any structure nor on a wooden-floored porch. The reason is that even seemingly cold ashes can re-ignite and start a house fire. (Though if you've never burned the stove and the house has been empty for years the first dump is probably cold, but never assume that again unless it's been all summer without a fire.) This is a very important thing that people are occasionally careless about, with tragic consequences. I don't know if you recall the awful news reports a couple of years ago of a whole family, with many children, in an newly reno'd old house in CT that lost their lives because of a fire started by improperly disposed-of ashes and coals. Even though we dump our ashes and coals in a closed can, outside, I have more than once gone back a few days later to dump the next batch and found glowing embers still in the coals after days of being shut up. So, first make sure you have that ash pan installed and cleaned out before burning. And try to find the black cover that slides over it for carrying out to disposal area. The air that feeds the fire flows up through the ash bed, so if the under-stove pan is stuffed and there are too many ashes in the firebox, you will have a dickens of a time getting things going properly. You can find a good magnetic w/s thermometer at any store that sells w/s accessories. Expect to pay $10-15. If you can find one with a little half-round wire handle, buy it. I think they are better as they can be more easily moved. But if you can't, buy another kind since you can't operate the stove without one. The reason for that is that after you light the stove, let the fire build and settle down, and then based on temps measured at the center of the griddle on top, turn the left hand lever completely backwards (it will go past a slight resistance with a firm "snap" when it is properly positioned) to close the internal smoke door and force the exhaust pathway through the cat. You will hear a change in the sound of the stove, and you should see a fairly prompt rise (over minutes, not seconds) of temps on the top surface of the stove. This is the heat created by burning off the gases and particulates in the smoke, which is what the cat is doing - wringing the most amount of heat out of the fuel and at the same time cleaning up more of the residual particulates that are generated in a wood fire. This explanation is sort of coming in at the middle of an intial firing sequence, as a I don't know how experienced you are. I could start at the very beginning and go through it step by step, if that would help you. One other thing to verify (either by you or your sweep): is your stove connected to a dedicated outside combustion air feed? This will be a visible pipe (though it can be suqare or rectangular) that comes up and attaches to the lower back of the stove. It will the only thing back there, if it's there. It provides a closed delivery of air to the fire, essentially isolating it from the air in the room. This has important implications if you are installing the stove in house with a range or cooktop ventilation equipment in the smae space. A w/S without an outside air connection will complicate the make-air calculations for the vent hood, creating a code issue (possibly expensive to address) and more importantly a potential safety issue (carbon monoxide). So, all in all I'm hoping you tell me the original installers set it up with an outside air connection. You can retrofit it, but with a masonry hearth it will more complex. Do you have a cellar under that part of the house? Oh, one other thing, while you are at the w/s store pick up a spray bottle of whatever they recommend for cleaning the glass doors. This is usually a fiercely vile spray made from lye, but it does the job. Use lots of newspaper under the stove and in front, and heavy duty gloves and a roll of paper towels. Do not scrape, steel wool or use a scrubby on the glass. It is special borosilicate glass intended to withstand very high temps, but small scratches made during cleaning could compromise it causing it to fail catastrophically. But when the glass is clean, or at least clean-er, the flames are lovely to see. If you're feeling affection for the stove, you can buy a tin of stove blacking which will make it look like new (though the first few fires after blacking can be mildly stinky.) I can post pics of the ash-pan lid and the small snap-on firescreen so you can see what to keep an eye out for, if that will help. I don't know if you will be able to buy these parts new for older stoves as the shapes have changed, I think. And I realized after I had posted that I had misspoke in my first post: you have VC Defiant Encore stove. Do you plan to use the stove for significant heating or just from time to time? It is a workhorse, though you will need fuel for it, and that may be hard to come by the first year - and expensive. We burn ours 24/7 once we light it in late October until the end of April. Of course we do have to shut it down once a month or so for chimney cleaning/sweeping chores which can't be done if there's any lingering fire. You can empty the ashes when the stove is burning, though it's easier, and safer to choose a point when the fire is at an very low ebb to do that. We leave a fire in when we are away from home, and of course at night. We refuel around 11:30pm/midnight, and again in the morning (one of us is a night owl and the other an early bird, so it works out OK). In deep winter the house is quite cold by the morning, but the stove re-warms it fairly quickly. If you have subs working on the house I would advise you to refuse them permission to burn the stove, there's too much risk that they think they know what they are doing, when they really don't. That goes for teenagers, babysitters, house guests and etc. Running a stove safely is very serious business. Finally, do you have small (rug-rat age) kids or cats? Kids too young to appreciate the danger of a hot surface must be protected by a fire-guard screen around the hearth itself. The good news is that kids soon grow into an age when they won't accidentally get burned. Cats not so much. Not all cats, or even most, but some cats will jump on the stove while it's burning (500-650 degrees F on the top surface) and get terrible burns on their paws. I have one cat who has done it twice. Now we have a fence around the stove. I have had literally dozens of other cats (I do feral cat rescue) who have lived here with same stove and never jumped up. As I re-read what I wrote and remembered what you said about a break in, I thought I'd also mention that inside the stove there should be a pair of detachable 6" tall cast-iron andiron brackets in the front and a removable cast iron floor grate with diagonal oepnings set in the bottom of the stove. I mention this because these items would be easily detached by thieves and sold for scrap iron. (We had an old cast iron coal stove stolen from an outbuilding last spring.) If you stove has been stripped of these parts, you'll need to get them before any fire can be lit. Hope my long post is somewhat useful to you. Let me know if you want step by step lighting instructions. (For after the stove and chimney have been checked out and certified OK to go.) L.

Kathsgrdn - I was going to say the same about the blue tooth thing. You really need to be on the phone so much that it has to be glued to your ear? And you look ridiculous walking around talking to yourself. It drives me crazy. The trend I really hate is how people use cell phones, as mentioned in many posts above. Yes, I've used my in public, but I try to make it short. I see people walking around a store in deep conversation. Hey, I don't want to hear your conversation. Take it outside! Once when I was in Starbucks, a women couldn't even pry the phone off her ear long enough to place her order. She instead grabbed one of the business cards on the counter, wrote down her order, and threw it at the barista. She talked the entire time, took her drink and left. The barista and cashier were floored. They couldn't believe the nerve. Don't even get me started on people using cell phones when driving. Zeetera - really, you don't like scarves other than in winter? There are some cute linen ones for the spring.

I want to thank you all for replying to my post. It was very generous of you to take the time to help me with this decision. You all made some great points for me to consider. Looks like we'll be putting it on the market but I thought I would address some of the comments in your posts at this point: Play up what 'spoke' to us when we bought it issue: That's gonna be tough. I dare say I do hate EVERYTHING about this place: but I know that can't be entirely true. Mostly is though! I'll give it that it has a pretty good floor plan and a nice neighborhood. Period. Why did we buy it? Well we had a list of things we wanted the new house to have and this one had many of them, when we looked at the list on paper and put checkmarks next to it, it looked ok. i.e. 2 car att garage, 4 bedrooms, office, screen porch, playroom...Plus basically had the square footage we wanted for our family of 5, a nice quiet neighborhood, and was in the school district we were trying to get into, which was our #1 priority and could close in time (#2priority). That's about it. Nothing of the actual house itself spoke to us, other than to say" you'll need to fix this , clean that, update this, repair that"....ad nauseum. It had been neglected by previous owners and showed its wear and tear but we thought it had the bones to work with and once we put "our mark on it, it would be nice" and we'd be in a good school district. I remember saying that. We had left a lovely new house that I had drawn the plans for and needed nothing done but was in a poor school district. After the move I sunk into a very deep depression which I have been able with much effort to scratch and crawl my way out of but as a result I think I'll forever resent this hellhole since it robbed me of a couple years when I was depressed. We have done a lot of improvements and in fact it is considered by most (not me) to be quite nice. It is nice but I am too emotionally tied to hating it to ever see it as really nice. We could stay and continue working on it since there are a few mre things we'd like to do. The only thing is the more we do, though in a way it helps, in another way it just reminds me of what a mistake we made by buying it in the first place. The $30,000 lost issue: I think I was referring to the fact that the market has depreciated by that much here so I was seeing it as a loss IF we move but I agree with the point that it's actually already lost! I had never thought of it that way. Thanks for pointing that out. The can we afford to move question: I'd say that's the million dollar question. And the answer is a definite yes but with some caveats. We'll be paid off here within 9 years. Oldest will be starting college in 6 years. If we move, we'd need to go back up to a 15 year mortgage and payments would be about the same as now. Yikes, I am very frugal and paying a mortgage for an extra 6 years is a tough pill to swallow. Tougher even than the Prozac maybe! We have lots of friends who have lovely houses and 30 yr mortgages but I can't handle that, though we could have one S W E E T !!! house if I could. Not in the cards for me or my DH since I hate debt. a 15 yr mortgage again will be a little tough to take but less so than living here where I'm unhappy. And you know what they say: "If Momma ain't happy, ain't nobody happy!" Life is short issue: Sure is which is why we are planning on selling. It's a tough market and we're only willing to lower the price such that we can get a nicer place with a 15 yr mortgage. We won't go so low on price here that would necessitate us getting a 30 yr mortgage for any new place. That would definitely make me resent any new place such that I'd be in the same boat as now. Hopefully we'll get lucky and be able to sell with not too big a loss. So, have I mentioned that I have a lovely house to sell????? LOL

I think it might be good to wait until you have more of your things together -- or at least until you can gather samples of the materials, a photo where you color in the not yet complete details and can try to see everything together. I had to print a small photo of a light fixture, cut it out and tape it onto a drawing of our elevation that I had colored to reflect our finish choices for DH to "see" it. You do what you have to, but if lighting is part of the jewelry, you have to know what the outfit is to get it right. I looked at Potter Barn because I couldn't' remember if I had seen any wood fixtures in their catalog. I didn't find wood, but I did find some others that would work -- both chandy and pendant styles. They have some pendants in the $100 range that would work. The plain glass type with the Edison bulb has other maker options too -- we bought one for a dormer that was closer to $100 at a local lighting shop. HD and Lowe's each have one or two in the stores near us too. There are a mind-numbing number of choices out there. Take your time, keep a record of what you think you like and where you saw it and come back to them. Some will likely fall by the wayside as things that don't hold your interest over time, and others may fade as the rest of the kitchen comes together, but then you will have what's left to focus on and any of those are likely to be good choices. If the price range is still not right, at least you have the image of what you want it to look like and can stay focused on finding something similar.