How Hadley Chimney Fort Worth Was Born in Fort Worth
Hadley Chimney Sweep had been doing things the right way since 2003, and by the time we started talking about Fort Worth, the brand had a reputation that preceded it. The question wasn’t whether the chimney trade needed another option here. It was whether Fort Worth homeowners would recognize the difference between a sweep that shows up with a camera and a written price, and one that shows up with a brush and a vague invoice.
Cory Mitchell took that question personally. He had spent years watching homeowners get handed a quote at the door that bore no resemblance to the price they’d been told over the phone. He’d seen the look on someone’s face when a technician pointed a flashlight up a flue and said the word “liner” like it was a diagnosis. That look stayed with him. It was the reason he wanted to bring the Hadley Chimney Sweep standard to this city: a clean sweep, with photos to prove it. Not a trust-me job. A see-it-for-yourself job.
So the Fort Worth branch wasn’t opened with fanfare. It was opened with a promise: every homeowner gets a written price before any work starts, photo updates before and after, and a live arrival time they can actually track. That’s The Relay Visibility Guarantee, and it’s the foundation under everything we do here. Cory didn’t want to build just another chimney company in Fort Worth. He wanted to build the one he’d have wanted to call when he was the one standing in the living room, looking up at a dirty flue, wondering what the real story was.
Cory Mitchell’s Personal Connection to the Chimney Cleaning Trade
Nobody grows up dreaming about soot. Cory certainly didn’t. What drew him in was the moment the job was done. The first time he watched a chimney go from black and crusted to clean, the change was so immediate it felt like cleaning a window for the first time. You could see the surface again. You could see the brick. You could see what had been hiding underneath.
Early on, he spent a season working alongside an older sweep who moved through houses with a kind of quiet precision that Cory never forgot. The man never rushed. He laid down drop cloths like he was setting a table. He explained what he was doing to whoever was home, even when they didn’t ask. And at the end of every job, he ran his hand along the hearth and checked the floor for dust before he packed up. It wasn’t the sweeping itself that got under Cory’s skin. It was the care. The idea that you could do hard, dirty work and still leave a house cleaner than you found it.
He’s thought about that a lot over the years. This trade puts you in someone’s home, right next to the thing that keeps them warm through a Fort Worth winter. There’s trust baked into that. The smell of creosote is something you get used to, but the look on a customer’s face when they see the before-and-after photos for the first time, that doesn’t get old. If Cory weren’t doing this, he’d probably still be working with his hands somewhere, fixing something, making something right. But he’d miss the moment at the end of a sweep, when the camera comes out and the proof is right there on the screen, and the homeowner finally knows exactly what they paid for.
Meet Cory Mitchell – The Person Behind Every Job
Cory Mitchell is the Owner & Founder of Hadley Chimney Fort Worth. He leads a local team that works to The Relay Standard, the same code every Hadley Chimney Sweep location follows: book in a tap, get a live arrival time, see photos of the work, get a written price before anything starts, and pay from a digital invoice link when the job is done.
What sets Cory apart isn’t a franchise playbook. It’s that he still shows up with the same mindset he learned early on: do the work like it’s your own fireplace. He’s the kind of person who checks the hearth twice before he leaves, not because anyone’s watching, but because that’s the job. On a day off, you’re more likely to find him with a project going at home than sitting still.
His commitment to Fort Worth homeowners is simple: if we wouldn’t be comfortable with the work in our own home, it doesn’t happen in yours.
Our Promise to Fort Worth Homeowners
We don’t expect anyone to take our word for anything. That’s the whole point. Every job we do in Fort Worth follows The Relay Visibility Guarantee: a live arrival time you can track, photo updates before and after, a written price before the first tool comes out, and a digital invoice you can pay from your phone. No guesswork, no surprises at the door.
Honest pricing isn’t a slogan here. It’s a document. You get the price in writing before we start, and it doesn’t change unless we find something that needs extra attention, and even then, you’ll see it in the photos and hear about it before it costs you another dollar. We stand behind the work because the evidence is already in your hands, literally and digitally.
Our Credentials
- State-licensed: every pro working under our name is required to hold the license their state requires for the services they perform.
- Insured & bonded: the same requirement applies. Coverage is a non-negotiable standard, not an add-on.
- Local experience: the Fort Worth team knows the chimneys in this region, the weather that affects them, and the creosote patterns that come with our burn season.
- Strong local reputation: we’ve earned it the slow way, one clean chimney and one photo report at a time.
Here’s why that matters when you’re hiring someone to work inside your home. A license means the person on your roof has met a real standard set by the state. Insurance and bonding mean you’re not left holding the bag if something goes wrong. And a reputation built locally means the company has a reason to treat you right: our name is attached to this city. We don’t get to disappear after a bad job and rebrand. The neighbors talk, and we like it that way.
Rooted in Fort Worth
We work in the neighborhoods people actually live in: the older brick homes near TCU, the new builds stretching toward Benbrook and Saginaw, the established streets in Keller and Mansfield. Fort Worth is a city of fireplaces, and we’ve spent enough time here to know how the local climate and the local burn habits affect a flue. That’s what “rooted” means to us. Not a slogan. Just knowing the ground we work on, and the people who live on it.
Written by Cory Mitchell, Owner at Hadley Chimney Fort Worth, serving Fort Worth and the surrounding communities since bringing the Hadley Chimney Sweep standard to this city in 2003.