Presto! Instant Fireplace Renovations

Pop pop ordered an insert for the fireplace. Most of the time, upgrades to the house fall under one category -- me. 

Pop pop, as most of the grandkids call my father-in-law, told me there was a package on the front porch for me. I noticed the front door still closed and locked and questioned how he knew this. Apparently, Amazon told him that it was there. Someone should shoot that Amazon photographic satellite down. How else would it know there was a box there!

Regardless, I struggled. I moaned. I strained. I groaned. And, ten minutes later, the box was in the house. It was but a mere 10 minutes more that I found something to cut the top open. All I had left was to drag the open box to the soon to be renovated fireplace.

Don’t let its minuscule size fool
you... It was a beast!

Approximately 15 minutes and eight pages of instructions later (plus instructions hurled my direction by the spectators), I had the unit in place. Then, I simply plugged it in and pressed the "on" button on the handy-dandy remote control that came with it. Voila!

Somehow, the little electric heat box with its holographic flames I put in the fireplace seemed anticlimactic. It made me yearn for my childhood and the day my dad got a real wood stove for the fireplace.

Thinking of that stove brought back some fond memories of times I spent with my dad. It seems like we spent a lot of time together cutting wood and hauling it to the house to feed that stove. We had a lot of fun adventures.

Once, he stood behind the truck and then asked me to back it out. And then there was the underground bees nest. It seems I remember the axe head flying off once. Good thing I yelled "fore" like they do in golf. My dad could have been hurt! I even had to stand on the back of the truck once to help it get traction. That might actually be related to me backing the truck out. Hmmmm...

Once, I even remember him joking with me by saying "don't cut that tree down! Do you want it to land on the truck?"

While there are other fond memories I could regale upon my readers, there is something to be said for Pop pop's genius. One Amazon purchase plus one easy click of a button equals -- presto! Instafire!