Upon first glance, one might think, "This looks cool and all, but what's the purpose?". And the answer is that it's actually an on-trend way of childproofing the fireplace!
While most childproofing efforts don't exactly make our homes into havens of style, this one over at Rook does! By stacking firewood in the firebox, children are prevented from climbing inside. From Leila at Rook:
I thought I'd send you a pic of how we have kid-proofed our fireplace - an idea I haven't seen before in this context. I simply stacked firewood in there and it stops them crawling in and getting covered in black soot.
Love the look, Leila. And an extra bonus point for it making the home a little safer for the wee ones.
(Image: Rook)
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straightforward enough concept to keep a kid from going *in* to the fireplace, but it does give a climber some nice little nooks to put their feet and climb up. not to mention the worry about splinters, and my worst squick factor - spiders love to build nests in wood piles.
just like molly h my first thought looking at this was "Oh boy, that's going to be a lot of tears and running to mommy to get out the splinters!"
And it means you don't get to enjoy a cozy fire in the wintertime.
My child would just pull out the wood and use it as a stacking toy and/or try to throw it.
yes..first I thought of is splinters!!
I second Caralyn's comment, my kid's not a climber, but he does love "repurposing" everything as a stacking toy...and a missile sometimes too! It looks cute though, and if it works for her kids, it might be worth a try for certain families...
I have to agree with some of the comments above - I've thought about doing this with our fireplace before, but I just think our son would continuously take the wood out and play with it, resulting in everything (including him) getting dirty and picking up splinters. Maybe one for the future.
Maybe I have strange kids, but so far my 3 year old and 17 mth old haven't climbed it or pulled the wood out! I'll keep you posted, though!
The pieces of wood are also quite heavy - too heavy for the 17 mth old for sure. The 3 year old could probably pull the wood out, but one hopes she keeps listening to me!
I put a "body" pillow with coordinating color of living room in my fireplace. Then added toss pillows next to and in front on hearth. Extra seating and kid-safe!
This is what I'm planning on doing with our (non-functioning for the time being) fireplace for the same reason. I'd like to use birch logs - anyone know of a good resource for the logs?
korijane - I was also originally going to use birch but I couldn't find a good source either (except for getting some when someone chopped down a tree!). Of course, about a year before I did the fireplace I saw some really cheap being sold as pre-packaged firewood. You can also get thinner logs (5 in diameter?) at florists.
By the way, I've had my fireplace (it's non-functioning) this way for about 6 months now and I'm still pleased with it.
We just boarded over our fireplace with plywood. This looks a lot nicer!
My little one is only 9 months but I'm pretty sure he would manage to pull out the wood (he is already able to remove a cast iron skillet from a drawer).