Replacing the Stove
The place was colder than Hades when we arrived, and a whole week of running the wood stove continuously only warmed up the living room. A now wood stove was high on our priority list - the one we had was a lovely "antique" but it ate wood without apparently converting it to heat, so we felt that it was time to retire it and get in a new one.
Did you know (we didn't) that wood stoves now come with catalytic converters just like cars do - strange and wonderful. We did lots of research and decided that a super-duper emissions controlled woodstove would be just the thing for these cold winter nights. We decided that the original arrangement was a little inconvenient, and that it would be better recessed into the wall, to be precise into an old fireplace that we were convinced had been covered up, at least according to the marks on the wall. 
Well, we got an enthusiastic young man in to start knocking into said surmised fireplace, and were very surprised when all he found was adobe bricks that had obviously been in place since before the ark. So, we decided that we wanted a fireplace anyway, so he and a couple of young helpers went to work with a will a few days later. This time he cut the plaster from the allotted area, and found a little hole some two feet off the ground. This turned out to open into a smallish niche with a chimney entrance, which of course invited more exploration. Unfortunately, he chose to prod at the stuff in the chimney while he had his face under it. First I knew was there was lots of shouting and yelling and coughing and choking, and he and his two young helpers staggered out of the black cloud that totally filled the living room and was following them out, like something out of an Edgar Allen Poe story.
Well, order was eventually restored but the clean up job took most of the rest of the day.
Lonnie sculpted a reasonable shape to the niche, added a little plasterboard and a lot of plaster. In fact the next visit got the whole wall replastered. We added some conduit beforehand so we can have outlets in that wall.
We then shoved the new stove into the vacant space and cobbled it into the chimney, where suffice it to say that it worked quite well
under the circumstances - i.e. very poor draw into a dirt tube full of highly flammable creosote and soot. Dangerous, but no way we could live without it as it was (and still is) the only source of heat in the whole house.
The kitchen stove was feeding into the same flue, not a good thing, so we disconnected it and plugged the hole with an aluminum pie plate.
More research and then stainless steel tubing was ordered, but bad weather, snow and gale force winds, kept the installers off the roof. So we bought rods and brushes, read the instructions, and swept the chimney from the bottom. More dirt and bad language! Meanwhile the expensive new top-of-the-line stove was perched on a makeshift support of bricks and 2x8s.
Back to Santa Fe and Albuquerque again to search for tile to line the niche and make a pad under the stove. We were doing alright until Shelley discovered the granite wasn't all that much more, and we ordered up a piece. Now we had to decide what we wanted and to detail the cutting instructions. With luck it would be ready for Christmas (we thought). Fat chance! We got delivery in March.
Lonnie cleaned the edges of the old hole and poured a concrete pad on top of the adobe support in the basement and built a wooden support on top of that. Then the large marble slab, the vertical slab and finally the small piece inside the niche was cut to fit and then the final plaster work to trim the whole thing.
Cheop's law states that all construction projects come in over due and over budget. It is unknown if he originated this or was quoting an earlier source. Whichever it still holds true, but the results were worth it in this case.