Mission Accomplished

Well, our warm winter is under way - our wood stove is up and running!--

It took some time to get all the involved work done, there were many steps involved, but I'm now sitting here with my robe open to keep cool...--

Each step of this job and related jobs were tedious. It began with hauling the stove, chimney pipe and 2+ cords of firewood home. Then all that firewood had to be neatly stacked against the back of the shop. That was kinda fun. I stood at the pile and chucked the wood at Rick who stacked it. He's got a very persnickety nature (you'll see me describe him that way often, it's a very dominant trait in him) so he was best suited to do a good job of stacking. So you could say I was a wood chuck - and I chucked as much wood as this woodchuck could chuck!--

Rick has been concerned about the back of the shop and was trying to figure out a way to protect it, since someone in the past either didn't build eaves onto it or cut them off after building. Either way, the back of the shop had no protection from rain. So he opted to add a small roof as a 2fer - it'll protect the majority of the building and will also keep everything below it dry. Mainly our firewood.--

We pondered what to do for a hearth and finally came to the conclusion that a homemade one would be best. We chose the tile, slate, and when I went to buy it realized it would be too difficult to work with, mainly due to it's thickness variation. So I picked up a selection of tiles and brought them home to "try them on". Rick thinks we got the one I wanted - wrong. We got the one the majority wanted. It was about #3 on my list.--

Once that decision and purchase was made a tile saw was needed to move on, there were 6 cuts that needed to be made. So one beautiful Saturday (we had lots of those!) we got the saw and I did all the cuts right in the back of Rick's pickup.--

I was ready to start building the hearth finally and ended up coming down with a flu. I did my best, a small job every day, and got it completed that week anyway. Whew!--

We brought in the stove and did the figuring where it would sit, then where the pipe would have to go through the ceiling, avoiding the roof trusses. I cut the hole in the ceiling, built the box for the support for the chimney pipe (stove pipe and chimney pipe are not the same thing) and installed the transitional piece that was also the support. I had intended to do the stove pipe and Rick would do the chimney pipe but due to a lack of communication he ended up doing both. We learned from that, though, that we both need to communicate better and not assume (you all know how that saying goes about "assume").--

So the stove pipe was done and the chimney started to go up. Bad timing in a way. Rick was doing it after work and we just "fell back" last weekend which meant that he had one less hour of daylight each day. But he just kept plodding along, finally spending enough time up there by halogen light to get the job done on Wednesday, since the rain was supposed to start yesterday and continue for a number of days.--

Last night we lit our first fire. It is a very good quality stove, a Lopi, and burns beautifully. It looks like a gas fire, it burns so evenly! Denny and Heather came up for a little while and we all sat around in this end of the room by our computers, as usual. But this time it was a little more inviting!