Crisis in Karup

It's a very good thing that spring is on the way. But, it would be helpful if the air would warm up just a bit faster.

You see, we have one of these:



We use this to heat our house. We do have radiators in various rooms, but we don't turn them on as it's cheaper to buy briquettes or wood for the 'brandeovne' and use it instead. But, now we have a problem:



See those random items in front of the fireplace? Those are supposed to be IN said fireplace. That twisted hunk of metal is supposed to be holding up one single top plate, which, as you can see, is now two pieces of top plate.

Now, if you remember, there was a guy here to inspect all of this before the season began. And, while the pieces were still in the fireplace at that time, the metal was nearly as twisted at that point as it is now - it just did a better job of holding up the top piece. Flash back a few months to this conversation:

Me: "Er det ok?"
Firedude: "Ja, det er det"
Me: "Ok!"

Obviously, det er ikke ok! On Saturday morning, it all collapsed into a pile of rubble. And so we started searching the web to see if we could find replacement parts. No wait, actually, we started by holding a mirror and flashlight behind the fireplace while attempting to read the label to determine who the manufacturer was and what model it was. YOU try reading a german label backwards in a mirror. I spelled out, letter by letter, the biggest word I could find, only to have Ole finally say.. "oh, that just means fireplace" - argh!

We finally figured out that the model was called Nevada. The "grass is always greener" product naming strikes again. What is it about European manufacturers naming everything after American cities/places and American manufacturers naming everything after European cities/places?

Anyway - then we googled things. Lots of things. Ole's googling was going much better than mine since he could at least attempt the various danish or german names for things. The 'nevada fireplace' that I googled didn't work so well.

What we found, after an hour or so, was ... not much. We think we found a similar model so we think maybe we found the right manufacturer - not that it matters any as it didn't help us in figuring out where to find replacement parts.

Long story short - I turned on a radiator or two - and Ole's gonna 'call a guy'. So, hopefully we'll just be able to get some new inserts and won't need to get an entirely new fireplace!