# [Sample Post] The stove in the lounge
Author: Cristi McGowan
Author URL: https://blog.hothomeswaco.com/author/cristi-mcgowan
Published: 2026-09-21
Category: House
Category URL: https://blog.hothomeswaco.com/category/house
URL: https://blog.hothomeswaco.com/the-stove-in-the-lounge

![A wood stove burning in a wooden cabin interior](https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1678274909137-ae0677d24a9b?ixid=M3w3OTAzOTJ8MHwxfHNlYXJjaHwyfHx3b29kJTIwZmlyZSUyMHN0b3ZlJTIwY2FiaW4lMjBpbnRlcmlvcnxlbnwxfDB8fHwxNzg4NjQ2NzI4fDA&ixlib=rb-4.1.0&w=1600&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop)

The stove was here before us and will be here after. It was installed in 1962 by our grandfather, who bought it second-hand from a hotel in the town that was going over to oil, and it has been lit every winter evening since, which is about eleven thousand evenings.

## What it does

It heats the lounge, which is the room everyone ends up in after dinner. On a still night it heats the corridor above it too, and the guests in rooms 5 and 6 know this and ask for those rooms in January. It dries boots, which stand in a row in front of it every evening in winter and are warm by morning.

## The rules

1. Lit at four, by us. Not earlier, because the room does not need it, and not by guests, because the damper is a matter of practice.
2. Fed until eleven, by anyone. Guests are welcome to add a log. They are not welcome to add three, which is a lesson the lounge learned one January.
3. Never left with the door open. The stove draws hard and an open door is a room full of smoke in a minute.

## The wood

Larch and beech, from our own wood above the inn, cut in spring and dried for two summers. A winter takes fourteen cords. It is stacked in the shed behind the kitchen, and the stack is a thing people photograph.

## What we will do differently

A second basket of kindling by the lounge door, so nobody goes out into the snow for it at ten at night, which somebody does every winter.


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