The chimney issue had been raising its ugly head for several months, periodically for much longer, as particular seasons, weathers, temperatures, qualities of wood and moods of house occupants could affect the pull of the lum quite dramatically.
But things eventually came to an impasse two weeks past, and the decision to close the chimney permanently had to be made, when a fully smoke-filled house for the umpteenth time had us taking a lengthy walk until it cleared. Leaving all doors and windows open in the coldest months, albeit in central-south Italy, is not ideal. But doing so after multiple days without proper heat nor a hot bath or shower, and feeling like our home was asphyxiating us…. It was time to do the unthinkable: move the chimney.
The chimney is/ was a bizarre and feisty addition to the original house – when I write ‘original’, the word sets off a wa-wah sound (i.e. it is not true!); the house, like many in this medieval quarter (and most along this street) is a fabulous lasagna of epochs and ages. It grows out from the deep roots of the original foundations of the fortified city back in the 1100s when, the outer wall below has 1657 carved into a beautiful old supporting stone, and the upper external rooms are as recently added as the 1970s.
Perhaps the bigger palazzos here tended to have built-in chimneys, but I knew the chiminiera in this one to have been constructed much more recently. The bread oven at the back of the kitchen (which I took out to eventually have the wood-burning stove in) had been built by the owner previous to myself, who had built it by hand out of recycled local bricks, tiles and some pieces of the old alter from the chapel in the room next door – which is now my sewing atelier. The smoke tube/ cana fumaria had to break through my ceiling, the house above’s, and then come up through a terrace above them, and through a horrible pipe which went up for another two or three floors until it reached the official sky.
Since coming into this house, in the cold but sunny midwinter of 2010/11, and when I was using an old fireplace and Boschetti scaldabagno - plumbed in a hectic manner together, through a wall, and up into the main chimney – I had rather a positive relationship with the flue. Despite the first day debacle of setting fire to the chimney (which of course served well to clean it thoroughly!), there were few issues.
the newly-reclaimed larder, where the stove was previously
The initial couple of fires of each new winter season could have caused a bit of a back-lash with smoke, as the lum hadn’t heated yet, and the cool air took to pulling the dark clouds back down, before they’d worked up the momentum to exit above. That and the profound misfortune of two pigeons over the 15 years, who got too comfortable sitting on top of the lum and fell down the several floors to meet their smokey demise…. Mostly the chimney did what it was designed (or at least, constructed) to do.
But recent years had seen an increasingly cantankerous lum, sometimes working, often not, to the end that I was glad when 
The unthinkable had to be reimagined. There was no easy way to move the stove. It is enormous, terribly-terribly heavy, plus the walls in the house are a thickness that would make even a confident and muscled builder balk: over a meter in most places, and of marble and extremely heavy semi-precious boulders…. Breaking through a wall or two would be the least of the problem, when we are surrounded by other windows, doors, and potential issues with complaining neighbours…. Then there were the water tubes to think about. Days and weeks went by, between occasional brave attempts again to clean, unblock and reset the fire... each time ending in worse fumication.
Our heads were aching not just with the smoke, but with the very conundrum of HOW THE F*** TO get the stove and boiler repositioned: we thought of every single corner of every single room, and how the tube could be pushed into a hole or out of a window, so long as we could even temporarily get a hot fire on. It seemed as though wecd be obligated to (somehow???) move it down the (many) cellar steps AND through a low doorway that it may not pass via... Meanwhile, freezing rain and wind were rattling outside, and nipping at our elbows, as we planned and sketched and cried a bit with frustration, until a few possibilities began to crack some light into the situation.
There was an old niche in the lower outside wall, which used to be a small horse drinking bowl, filled from a pipe which I presume brought rainwater down from above somehow. And then there were the veneziani - the big metal rollerblinds. Which in the kitchen I didn’t use at all, and in the atelier I could envisage replacing with a heavy winter curtain or the like, so long it meant us having a warm room and a hot bath once in a while!
Without overthinking it (any more than we had already), and rather desperate for cleaning and relaxing, we started dismantling the rollerblind boxes. It was easy-peasy! Just mega-cobwebby, which added greatly to our keenness to soak in the blessed comfort of heated water.
The old storm-blinds deconstructed, and we set about making a hole in the back of one of the boxes (that had contained the blinds), for the chimney tube to exit from. It took a few hours of Vincent’s consistent effort, stretching his limbs to the max inside the far side of the empty cavity where the blinds had been… And he broke through!! We mused a little more, but took not long to decide which brick to knock out, and it was relatively painless to get the whole thing open for the next phase, all in a day’s work.
As impatient as I was to get every done NOW, the bath had to wait another day or so. The hydraulics shop was closed unexpectedly, and we were champing at the bit, as well as supremely grumpy and dirty, wanting our tubes and junctions for the final phase.
In the meantime, we drained the boiler, dismantled it disconnected the water whilst we opened up old junctions and then closed them, filled the old chimney entrance and cemented and painted over it, and cleaned the stove out and manhandled it across the kitchen and into the corner of the atelier that was to be its new home – all without any major breakdown or injury! We slid the heavy stove on a piece of material, to prevent floor scraping. And its position was fairly straightforward; there was only really the simplest solution – which is how we solved the whole affair: there is ALWAYS a simplest solution - which had to be in the corner nearest the window, so as to have the chimney tube sections meet and be able to turn a corner to get out of the wall…
Once we had the stove in place, and the boiler perched merrily on top at a jaunty angle – we began to feel glorious! Just a few more steps before that first delicious hot shower, which felt like a mirage in the desert at this point. I got on with cementing around the hole on the outside, and we added a short length of tube, then a whirlygig – not sure if that is what they are officially called, but this is how I refer to it – and a (hopefully!!) functional set-up was in place, at least for the confounded smoke to puff out of.
We had at least three visits, in the end, to the idraulici shop: we didn’t need much, but very specific things, which in this town can only be bought in one establishment. It was rather exciting to anticipate the movement of water from stove to shower and bath, but we had to cut and fit and tighten a fair bit more before then….
And another hole through a wall, but this was a relatively effortless enlarging of a phone cable hole, which turned out to be surrounded by plaster rather than heavy stone, and so just needed to be chipped away with a chisel.
This was Vincent’s first major plumbing job, and certainly the more elaborate one that I’d achieved in my years, but we fell into a good rhythm, delegating each to their specialised area, with him doing the strong arms parts, and me doing the professional plumber impersonation… Hehehe! The whole thing came together rather beautifully….
We turned the mains water back on, and with bated breath, listened to the water rush around dramatically…. The tubes only dripped a weeee bit from two of the junctions (there were around 9 in total that we’d had to rework), and this was very easily remedied by tightening them.
And then came the moment of revelation: would the water behave correctly when we opened the taps????
We very tentatively cracked open the first tap…. And no water came out …. An alarming rush of angry air seemed to be all that it could produce… I was in angry tears this time. Exhuasted, weeks without a proper wash, horribly cold and disgruntled…. I was ready to admit defeat, and call an (actual) plumber, but we tried one last time to coaxe the water through – even rocking the hot water tank a little, to get it to move…. It came through in burps and coughs, building in momentum…. And then THERE IT WAS. WATER. IN TAPS. FROM THE BOILER…….!!!!!!
The first setting of the fire was a euphoric moment: gathering together all of the scraps of card, paper, wood, furniture, branches – anything laying around that we could burn; in it went. A raging furnace soon brought life to the boiler, and we were dancing with glee – literally!!! - as we prepared for our first proper shower in months. (Our whole three months in Portugal it had been impossible to shower properly, and we had very very inadequate baths in a horrible old repurposed tank that we crouched in – not relaxing at all!)
Now we’re a couple of weeks into this great luxury overdose of both heat and hot water, and the joy of this epic energy from our own wild-harvested wood (or from the occasional, fabulously indulgent tronchetti), in our newly-organised mini livingroom, at the edge of my atelier…. We often enconse for the whole day and are quite happy sewing, drawing, writing, talking, playing Scrabble – and cooking amazing meals on the wood-burner or in its oven… Then luxuriating in a hot soak at the end of the day. My workspace (I share every week in the Needlework Monday community here on Hive) is heaven; a big sofa in front of the stove, with my sewing machines to hand, and all the materials, books, buttons and threads I could dream of, within reach….
And it is warm – yummy, deliziosa, toasty WARM!! No more frigid mornings, struggles to motivate, and feeling skanky without a proper regular soak! The change in our lives in very significant – and we’re still celebrating! Vincent is right now off downstairs to heat a large pan of extra water on a makeshift gas burner – which we bought for when we thought the chimney debacle could never be solved…. And then we have our 80 litres of happiness from our brilliant ‘intermediate technologies’ boiler – a most treasured Gift from my beautiful and super-generous soulsister 
Days are magical again: hooray for chimneys that work, and for the stoves and ovens and water-heaters and the skilled hands and clever minds that made this happen!! I will never take for granted the comforts that this stove provides us, and we both revel every time we get to lather up under the shower or lay in bubbles and oils and petals downstairs. Every bathing session is a sacred moment, and we will never bore of it or see it as a banal activity!
