So much for my beautiful chimney

Scott & I had a frightful night 2 nights ago. Mia woke me up at 1:50 am by jumping into bed with us making me notice a strong smell in the house. When I got up to check it out smoke from the woodburning stove was billowing out into the house through an unsealed pipe, ie a piss-poor professional stove installation that we had told the installer didn't seem right - his reply was that it was 'our fault' it didn't get done because we didn't remind him to do it and he made no offer or attempt to finish it. We had just had a falling out with this guy over money, the unfinished job & not getting the owners manual ( I had to ask him 3 times for it only receiving it 10 days ago, over a month into using the stove we knew little about). Luckily we noticed the smoke in time to curtail the damage to ourselves and the house (though my beautiful chimney looks like shit now that we had to clean off 2 feet of soot stains). The smoke backed up into the house because the screen that was put on the outside chimney was too small therefore clogging up with creosote. Had the seal inside the house been sealed the fire most likely would have just smothered itself out. We do take some part of the responsibility, but not knowing anything about woodburning stoves and having it working properly for over a month we didn't imagine it would get this serious. You would think professionals would though.


Needless to say we have a sleepless night airing out the house and being too freaked out to sleep. Scott spent the next day cleaning soot off of all our brand new furnishing/everything and getting the parts to finish installing the stove - properly. I had to go to work. Now we feel we should inform the person we bought the stove from- not fun - to tell him how lucky he is that we aren't suing his ass. Thankfully we live to tell the tale.