How Level Two Chimney Washington Was Born in Washington
Level Two Chimney Washington opened because this city’s housing stock demanded a standard most sweep companies weren’t offering. Rowhouses in Capitol Hill, colonials in Chevy Chase, mid-century ramblers in Silver Spring. Different builds, same lesson: a chimney inspection here means looking past a hundred years of prior repairs, liner patches, and what previous owners decided not to mention. When Corrine Halstead first walked through homes in Mount Pleasant and saw what passed for a chimney inspection, a quick glance up the flue with a flashlight, she knew the gap. Homeowners in Washington were inheriting stacks with decades of undocumented history and being told everything was fine. That’s not fine when the liner is cracked and the house is three feet from the neighbor’s.
So the branch was built around one practice: put a camera down every flue, archive what it sees, and hand the customer the proof. Not a verbal summary. Not a vague “you might want to think about some work.” A written record. The brand standard fit here because Washington runs on paperwork, inspections, and evidence. Homeowners buying near Howard, Takoma, and Friendship Heights aren’t going to spend thousands on a liner based on someone’s hunch. They want the footage. That’s what this branch delivers.
Corrine Halstead’s Personal Connection to the Chimney Cleaning Trade
Corrine Halstead didn’t grow up planning to run a chimney company. She came to this trade through the side door: a house she bought had a fireplace the home inspector waved past, and the first cold night she tried to use it, smoke backed into the living room. The sweep who came out was patient. He showed her the camera feed. There it was: a creosote glaze that had hardened into something closer to tar, plus a flue tile cracked in a way the inspector had missed because he never actually looked. That experience stayed with her. Not the fear of the near-miss, though that mattered. It was the fact that the sweep treated her like a person who deserved to see what he saw.
That’s the feeling she’s carried through more than a decade of working around fireplaces in the mid-Atlantic. The smell of aged soot has a particular character here, older homes burn decades of soft coal and hardwood and that history is in the flue. The weight of the camera reel, the sound of the brush bristles against clay tile, the specific way a failing parged crown sounds when you tap it. Those details tell you what’s actually going on. Corrine gets up in the morning because a homeowner in Arlington or Falls Church is about to use a fireplace they’ve never actually had inspected, and she knows what the camera will find, and she knows that finding it now is the difference between a sweep and a rebuild. If she weren’t doing this, she’d still be crawling around old houses, just as a side pursuit. The trade found her.
Meet Corrine Halstead, the Person Behind Every Job
Corrine Halstead is the Owner & Founder of Level Two Chimney Washington. She has spent more than a decade working in the chimney and venting trade, with deep familiarity in every part of the service: sweeping, camera inspection, liner assessment, and combustion safety. Her training came through hands-on mentorship with working sweeps and continued with manufacturer and industry coursework, not a corporate onboarding binder. That means she can explain, in plain language, what a spalled flue tile looks like on camera and whether it actually matters in your chimney, and she can explain it at the kitchen table. Outside the job, she’s a preservationist at heart, she’d rather see an original firebox repaired than ripped out. Her commitment is simple: every customer sees what she sees, and leaves with a written record of it.
Before
AfterOur Promise to Washington Homeowners
Our promises are shaped by the Haven Standard and they apply on every job. Clause 1: Have it in writing. Flat price, written scope, written warranty, before anyone starts. No door estimate that grows at the end. Clause 4 is the one that matters most to us personally: Evidence on every job. Photos and readings of what we actually found. If we tell you a liner is cracked, you’ll see the footage. If we tell you the flue is clean, you’ll see that too. And Clause 5: No surprises. No “while we’re in here” upselling. We quote what we see, and we don’t invent work the camera doesn’t show. That last point matters in this city, where an old chimney can scare a new homeowner into a five-figure rebuild before anyone has asked for proof.
Our Credentials
Every pro working under the Level Two Chimney Washington name is required to hold the license their state requires. Requirements vary across the DMV; in DC, Maryland, and Virginia, we make sure the paperwork matches the requirements where your home sits. Beyond that:
- Insured & bonded at the coverage levels required for the work we perform.
- Background-checked as a condition of working under our name.
- Camera-verified on every inspection, with footage archived and available to you.
- Written documentation on every job, per Clause 4 of the Haven Standard.
Why these credentials matter: someone is coming into your home, onto your roof, possibly above a gas line. You should be able to see, on paper, that they’re permitted to be there and that you have recourse if something goes wrong. We put the license number on the page for that reason.
Rooted in Washington
We work in every part of the district and the close-in suburbs: the tight alleys of Georgetown, the brick rows near Eastern Market, the wooded lots off River Road, the split-levels in Rockville and Gaithersburg, and the older stock in Arlington and Alexandria. Different chimneys, different histories. We treat every one as if we’ll be back next season. Because around here, with these winters, we probably will be.
Written by Corrine Halstead, Owner at Level Two Chimney Washington, serving Washington and the surrounding metro since 2009.