Just realized I've been cleaning fireboxes wrong for 3 years
I was working on a job in Portland last week, a big old Victorian with a masonry fireplace that hadn't been swept in like a decade. I did my usual routine, scraping and vacuuming, and thought I was done. Then the homeowner asked if I could show her how I clean the smoke chamber, and I realized I've been skipping that step entirely. I always assumed the vacuum attachments would get the soot off the walls, but nope, I had to get a wire brush in there and really scrape. The amount of creosote that came down was disgusting, like a full trash bag worth. Now I feel like an idiot for all the calls I've done where I left that area dirty. Has anyone else ever missed a key spot like that and only found out years later?