Best Laid Plans

Well, I WAS going to paint my bedroom window today. Fortunately it is big enough that I can crawl out onto the porch roof from the window, and even though it is slanted I can stand on it and work.

But today the turkeys were back, and a stray dog came up into the yard to chase them, and they went up into the trees. Tammy wanted pictures of her Dad in the corral, so I took them this morning while I was out taking pictures of the turkeys in the trees. Then we emptied the horse trough that I had brought up to the porch two months ago when it was so hot - Mike can't swim any more, but I wanted him to be able to sit on the porch and at least be able to put his feet in the water when he got hot. The sump pump put the water out to the poplar and ponderosa pines and the red dogwoods, while I watered the rest of the yard. Then... we decided to tackle the woodburning stove.

It is a cast iron stove, and as you can see there was a leak up in the roof that dripped down onto the stove - or, it would have, were it not for the cast iron pot on it. Unfortunately the pot had apparently overflowed onto the stove a couple of times, and underneath the pot was rusted some, too. The bottom pipe was rusted pretty badly, so it had to be replaced - not a fun thing to do! - and the cast iron would have to be cleaned.

Now, I've owned cast iron all my life, and the one thing I know about it is that, as heavy as it is, it rarely rusts through. You can take a rusty piece of cast iron, wire brush or steel-wool it down, and then oil it and heat it and it will come back black and shiny. Of course it takes a lot of effort!

Of course the pipe wasn't cast iron, so it had to be replaced. We'd bought the pipe, we just weren't looking forward to wriggling it out of place, and wriggling the new one in. There was a bird's nest in the cast iron flue, so we cleaned that out and reused the flue - not hard; drill two holes in the pipe and insert the flue. As rusty as the pipe was, the flue wasn't damaged at all. I thought it odd, though - we've had two fires in the stove since we got here, and the birdsnest didn't burn up! Another nice thing to see was that there was no creosote in the pipe, all the way to the roof vent 12 feet up. If a fire has very little smoke and the fire doesn't have a lot of green, damp, or 'oil' wood like pine, it will burn cleanly and not leave the residue that starts chimney fires and burns down houses.

It took us about two hours all told to do it - and then I spent another three hours scrubbing out the pot and lid, and seasoning them in the oven with oil, and then scrubbing down the stove and oiling it, too! So here's the finished project:

We got on the roof and "buttered" the roof seal with heat caulk; it had been tarred in place but the tar had cracked, hence the leak.

But we weren't done yet! D'ya see that little door in the wall to the right of the stove? That door is probably one of the coolest things I've ever seen, because it opens onto a wood box that has been built onto the back of the house. So I got the wheelbarrow and filled it with all different sizes of wood from the pile next to the garage, and then brought them over and stacked them neatly into the enclosed wood box. Mike helped me by breaking up the twigs into small pieces and putting them in a bag that we keep in the woodbox so that they are readily to hand. No spiders or other late night surprises in the house because of the wood indoors, and dry wood that is readily available without having to go outside, especially in snow.

If it doesn't rain tomorrow, Maybe I can get to that window and paint!