No fireplace here. We started off with a wood stove for heat and it just wasn't enough to heat the house and Steve was hurting himself chopping wood. Then the church was given an oil stove but it needed repairs. So we saved up and got it repaired and man do we ever LOVE it!
Thank God we did too because this summer was so cold we never turned it off! We just got our tank filled (over 100 gallons!) and so now we're set for the cold weather again.
In our new house we're going to have an in floor hot water heating system. It runs hot water through pipes that loop back and forth under the floor. For emergency backup we'll have a wood stove but we won't use it all the time. Those things just make such a mess all over everything that I really don't even want it for backup. But if our power goes out for any length of time (which can and has happened) we can still heat most of the house with that.