Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Other Projects

In between our forays into the woods in quest of deer (or bear), Mark and I have been doing other things. Like rebuilding the chimney on the kitchen fireplace and purchasing three cords of firewood.

The chimney project was made necessary when the clay flue liner collapsed last spring leaving me without a source of heat int he kitchen. The bottom support must have rotted out and the entire liner came sliding to the ground leaving no path for the smoke from the fire box.

We spent one day breaking up the clay liner and removing the top three concrete blocks that had also deteriorated. Then we ran down to Lowes and the Riverside Fireplace and Chimney store in Marcy to get stovepipe to fit through wall and into the sky.

A second day was spent reassembling the stovepipe and geting the thing operational. Now I'm really toasty again!

The wood came from a local jobber who had posted his number at the landramat. At $50 a face cord (that's half a full cord) plus another $5 per face cord for delivery, We decided to split three cords (6 face cords) between us. The wood man deliverd four face cords yesterday and promises to have the other two to us by the weekend.

Now I have a working fireplace in the kitchen (as well as the one in the living room) and enough wood to feed them both. I had cut and stacked two face cords of my own during the summer so I'm in good shape for the winter. If I were living here full time I would need about four times the amount of wood that I have but since I will be splitting time between here and NJ, I'm okay.

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