Chimney sweep near you
Yes, Grant Park and the Hollywood District are on our route, from the 1900s Craftsman houses around Klickitat Street to the apartments and condos along Sandy. The signature job is a wood or gas insert in a fireplace built for neither.
Updated
Grant Park is a neighborhood of early 1900s Craftsman and Old Portland style houses, about 87 percent owner-occupied in 2010, built with a brick chimney for an open fireplace upstairs and a coal or oil furnace below.
A century on, a Grant Park fireplace may hold something it was never designed around: a wood stove insert pushed into the firebox decades ago, or a gas insert added in a remodel. An insert that vents into the open brick flue instead of through its own liner cools its smoke too fast, coats the old flue with creosote and is the first thing we look for.
The Hollywood District itself is small and dense: apartment and commercial buildings from the 1920s onward along Sandy and Halsey, many heated by boilers, condos whose fireplaces are gas or absent, and about three-quarters of households renting in 2010. On the east side of the pair, the houses from the 1907 Rose City Park plat follow the Grant Park pattern: brick stack, two flues, often no liner.
The Grant Park chimney is a brick stack shared by the fireplace and the furnace, often raised without a clay tile liner, and many of the apartments in the Hollywood District vent boilers and water heaters through masonry stacks.
What fails first here depends on what was put into the fireplace. A wood insert slid into a 1910 firebox without a liner can glaze the old flue with third degree creosote and hide a cracked smoke chamber behind its shroud; a gas insert run without a vent check can corrode the flue with acidic condensate. Untouched fireplaces fail like old brick, at the crown and joints.
Inserts, apartments and real estate deals shape the calls from Hollywood and Grant Park, and each one lands on a different service.
An insert sweep in a Grant Park house means sliding the unit out or working behind its surround to brush the flue it actually vents into, then checking whether that flue is a liner or the bare brick of 1910. Where there is no liner, the sweep turns into a conversation about installing one before the next fire.
The fix for an insert venting into an open brick flue is a stainless liner connected directly to the appliance collar and run to the top of the chimney, with insulation around it where clearances call for that. Sized to the insert instead of the old fireplace, it drafts properly and stops creosote condensing on cold brick.
When a Grant Park house changes hands, Oregon's home-sale law means an uncertified wood stove insert has to come out. Our real estate inspection is a Level 2 with a camera, and it tells the buyer whether the insert is one that can stay, whether the flue behind it is lined, and what the masonry above the roofline needs.
The open fireplaces that were never converted get a plain sweep: brushes through the fireplace flue, a vacuum on the hearth, the smoke chamber and damper checked, and a glance into the adjoining furnace flue. Pictures from inside the flue come home with you, so a Hollywood or Grant Park owner can see what a 1910 flue looks like.
The Hollywood District's apartments and condos along Sandy and Halsey were built with gas fireplaces or no fireplace at all, which makes the dryer vent the one we clean there, sometimes a long run through the building to a hood nobody has seen. Property managers can book a stack of units at once, and the sign that it is time is a dryer that wants two runs per load.
The Hollywood District runs down to I-84 at the Hollywood/NE 42nd Ave Transit Center, and we come in along NE 33rd Ave or NE Cesar E. Chavez Blvd, or along NE Sandy Blvd and NE Halsey St from either direction.
Grant Park's residential streets north of Broadway and around Grant High School are house-lined blocks; the Hollywood blocks near the theater and the Saturday farmers market on NE Hancock St are busier, so for an apartment building we ask the manager about a loading zone or the alley. Tell us which floor the dryer or the fireplace is on when the building has more than two.
The Hollywood Theatre opened on July 17, 1926, and the district around it took the theater's name soon after.
Beverly Cleary set her Klickitat Street books in Grant Park, and the Beverly Cleary Sculpture Garden in the park, with Ramona, Henry Huggins and Ribsy in bronze, was dedicated on October 13, 1995.
Fred Meyer replaced its 1931 Hollywood store in 1947 with a larger one that had one of the first rooftop parking lots in Oregon.
Paulsen's Pharmacy has been open since 1918 and still runs a 1920s-era soda fountain.
The Hollywood Farmers Market, founded in 1997, sets up on NE Hancock St on Saturdays, and Grant High School and the Hollywood Library are the other landmarks people give directions by.
All three that the pair spans, 97212, 97213 and 97232, and we treat the whole area as one call on our Northeast rounds. A house off Klickitat Street, a condo above a shop on Sandy and an apartment building on Halsey all get the posted price for the service, with the drive built in rather than billed when the work goes ahead.
Yes, with a camera, and that look is the first thing to book before another fire. We check whether the insert connects to a liner that runs the full height of the chimney or simply dumps into the old brick flue, and we photograph the flue walls for glaze. An insert on an unlined flue stays cold until a liner is in; the pictures will show you why.
Yes, if the insert is an uncertified one: Oregon's home-sale law calls for it to be taken out and destroyed as part of the sale. The seller carries that duty unless the buyer accepts it in writing, and the buyer then gets 30 days from closing to do it. Open fireplaces, gas units and pellet stoves are exempt. Our removal-law guide covers the paperwork; a Level 2 inspection settles the flue behind it.
Both, and the open fireplace is the simpler job. A sweep covers the firebox, damper, smoke chamber and the whole flue with brushes sized to it, a vacuum running the entire time, and a Level 1 survey of the reachable parts, with photos from inside the flue. On an early 1900s Grant Park house we also peer down the neighboring furnace flue, since it shares the brick.
Check the Multnomah County wood smoke status before you strike a match; the county posts the color by late morning and a restriction takes effect at noon. Red means no wood fires in Hollywood, Grant Park or anywhere else in the county until noon the following day, exempt households aside; yellow is the county asking you to consider limiting burning. The county status page and the exemption form are both linked from our wood burning rules guide.
Before any fire, book a Level 2 camera inspection; that is the first step for a fireplace with an unknown history. The camera tells us whether the flue is lined, whether an old insert left glaze behind, and whether the smoke chamber is intact, and the roof pass checks the crown and cap. From there the answer is either a sweep and go, a liner, or a repair quote with photos.
Run the company through the state's public contractor lookup first; our guide to vetting an Oregon contractor walks through it screen by screen. After that, ask whether the inspection comes with the video from your flue and whether prices are posted ahead of time. For a Hollywood or Grant Park house with an insert of unknown origin, the flue footage is the part that keeps everyone honest.
Hollywood sits at the middle of our inner Northeast loop, with Irvington and Laurelhurst to the west and south and the ridge neighborhoods above.
Call with what the fireplace is doing, or text a photo of the opening and one of the chimney top, and we will name the service and its posted price before we come out.