Okay, so I had this old fireplace, right? And the bricks inside, they were all cracked and busted up. Looked terrible, and I was worried it wasn’t even safe to use anymore. So I thought, “I gotta replace these firebricks, but where do I even find them?”
First, I tried calling a couple of local hardware stores. No luck. They had regular bricks, sure, but not the kind that can handle the heat of a fireplace. One guy did say that it’s kind of like soapstone. Okay, great, but where to find that kind of thing, then?
Then I hit up the internet, searching for “firebox bricks near me.” Found a few places that seemed promising. I saw one company had a medium-duty kind, but it was vitrified, which I guess is good? Also some stuff about alumina, which, again, I guess is good? But which one to get? Oh, and they wanted to charge me R750.00 for them. Ugh, too much.
One website talked about a place called Cincinnati Reading Rock, which sounded like it might be a specialty store. I even found some BBB, and it had some good rating, but I don’t live in Columbus. And I want to go to the real store to look at the things, you know?
- Cincinnati Reading Rock – Seems specialized, but far away.
- Some BBB listings – Good ratings, but still not concrete.
- Lowe’s – Everyone knows this place, might have what I need.
My options that I found online:
Then I remembered Lowe’s. It’s a big chain, so they should have everything, right? I went down to my local store and, sure enough, they had a whole section of fireplace stuff. They had these firebricks that looked just like the ones in my fireplace. And they were way cheaper than that R750 online! Turns out I could just grab them online and pick them up at the store too, but I like to see things in person before I buy them, you know?
So, I grabbed a box of the firebricks and brought them back to my fireplace. After some work, I managed to replace the old, cracked firebricks, and now the fireplace looks good as new. Plus, I feel way better about using it now that I know it’s safe. I am happy that I didn’t get ripped off, and finally, it’s done. Not too bad for a weekend project, right?
