The Tulikivi Post

We've had our eye on a Tulikivi wood stove for about 10 years and finally ordered one this past March. The stoves are made in Finland and it took about 6 months for our stove to arrive in the US. The installation took longer and was messier than we expected, but the stove is finally finished! As you may not have heard of or seen a Tulikivi, we're posting photos of the month-long process. In case that's more information than you're interested in, here's a photo of the completely gorgeous finished product. Sophie and Helen are standing next to the stove for scale. The little door on top is a brick oven for baking and roasting all sorts of yummy delicacies.


Here's the same wall a month ago, before the workers arrived.


The Tulikivi is made almost entirely of soapstone and weighs over 7000 pounds. Therefore, the first step was to build a very sturdy foundation for the stove. The workers cut a hole in the floor the first day to expose the crawlspace and our home hasn't been childproof since then.


The finished foundation from the top. Of course, Sophie, Abe and Helen wrote their names in the wet cement and Gibson pushed his hand into it. We took a photo of their signatures, too, because they are no longer visible.

Here's a photo of the foundation from underneath the floor. There is a base of concrete, a tower of cement block, rebar and concrete, capped off with another concrete pad. The silver tube is a vent that provides fresh air directly to the stove.

With the foundation in place, the workers moved on to the chimney. They did their best to mask the area they were working in and tidied up each day before they left, but we still spent all month constantly vacuuming, mopping and dusting.

Here's a view of the completed chimney from the vantage point of where the stove will be connected. The ability to stand in our family room and see out the top of our roof caught all of our imaginations and we took turns standing here and looking up.

One of the challenges of putting a stove in an exisiting 2-story house was where to route the chimney. We decided to position the stove so the chimney could run through Becky's closet. Clothes are not a particular strength of hers, so she doesn't need a whole closet to herself. Besides, after Brandan works his organizational and craftsmanly magic in here, she'll have more room than before to hang her 5 skirts.

After the chimney, came the heat shield, a barrier made of reflective foil, steel studs, cement backer board, stucco and finished off with soapstone trim. By now the workers have been working 3 weeks and our kids love them. Watching them work is better than television.

Finally, the stove is delivered and unloaded on our patio. Becky was feeling frazzled by the construction process, but one look at the beautiful stone soothed her. The stove came in dozens of pieces, ranging in size from cubes a few inches per side to big slabs that were a couple of feet long.

The big pieces of stone were stacked on this side of the patio. We worried about Gibson knocking one of the pieces over on himself, but Becky couldn't even budge them. (A good description of the month might be "We worried about Gibson. . .")

This photo shows the first course being assembled. Although the Tulikivi looks charmingly rustic, it is highly engineered and very efficient. Channels in the stove circulate the hot air from the fire throughout the stove, where it heats up the stone. The stone then gradually releases the heat over a period of up to 24 hours. A short, very hot fire can heat the house all day. The stone doesn't get hot enough to burn you, only pleasantly warm to the touch.

Here the stove starts to take shape. The photo also shows the beautiful figuring on the stone.

Did you think this post would never end? We felt like that sometimes waiting for the workers to finish. (By the way, their names are Isaac and Justin.) The finished stove is 7 feet tall and 3 feet deep. Look at those gorgeous flames! We're so very excited for cooler weather and the chance to start using the Tulikivi to heat our home. And we have to decide what to cook first in the oven. Pizza? Bread? Pork tenderloin? We have to break the stove in slowly to allow the mortar to dry completely and then we can use it for real.