If the NSA had been documenting the goings on at the Dream House over Thanksgiving weekend, they would have witnessed Mr. and Mr. Blandings wildly flailing their arms and gasping for air as the house filled with smoke. Our first attempts at using the wood burning stove in the basement quickly devolved into a comedy of errors. We’d light the fire, the basement would start to fill with smoke and then we’d panic. We’d run upstairs and find that the first floor was also filling with smoke. So we would throw open the windows and let the arctic winter air fill the house and force out the smoke. We repeated this scene three times over the weekend before we finally decided that we’d better call in the professionals.
