So, to answer your questions out of order:

I did consider soapstone in the beginning, but I’m cheap and decided the extra cost wasn’t worth the benefits of it. Plus, we kind of dig the old fashioned look of cast iron. The radiant heating of soapstone is pretty cool, though. From what I hear, soapstone can also take longer to come up to temp (which isn’t good for my personality), but the result is more “even,” longer-lasting heat. And the stove itself doesn’t get as hot, which is nice if you’re accident prone. Anyway, the dealer we went through didn’t carry any soapstone stoves, so the temptation was never there. But, like I said, had it been an option for us I’m not sure I would have sprung for the extra cost.

Yes, our stove is now our primary source of heat! It’s great. Although, we didn’t have it during the absolute coldest part of the winter, so we may find ourselves supplementing with our other heater next year. Hard to tell. We don’t burn the stove overnight, though. We experimented with that for a couple of nights, but decided it was a waste of wood since the temperature in our house wasn’t dropping below our nighttime thermostat setting on our regular heater anyway.

Ok, the hearth. We opted to go with just a hearth pad instead of building one because 1) it was less $$$, and 2) we were in a hurry to install the stove because we were blowing through heating oil like no one’s business. The hearth we picked is slate and I like the looks of it just fine. That said, this is something that we’d like to change in the future. When cash is more plentiful and time is on our side, we’d LOVE to build a custom hearth. We never got to the point of researching materials, though.

As for the stove itself, there are a couple of features that I’m really glad we have – top-loading and an ash pan. Wood stoves are messy enough as is and the ash pan seems like a way easier and cleaner alternative to sweeping and vacuuming the ashes out. Top-loading also cuts down on the mess and, again, it just seems easier to drop a log on top of the fire from a safe distance instead of opening the front doors and sticking your hand into a raging inferno (which, come to think of it, is probably a plus for Bobby). Anyhow, I obviously don’t have anything to compare it to, but those two features sold us on this particular model and they’ve turned out to be really nice to have.

Good luck! Let us know what you decide on.