The Poor, Unused Blog

It's been so long since I've put down anything on this blog 'o mine that I started to feel sorry for it. Okay, it's only been a week, but it was starting to look unhealthy. Sometimes when I look back it seems like a lot has happened in the last week, and then other times I think about it and it's like, "eh" so I do nothing.

Suzie was sick for quite a while, and her persistent cough is finally toning itself down. There was a week there when she was pretty much outta commission. I'm glad she's back.

Ditto our kittycat, Cookie. She had some sort of food allergy that left her with skin problems and not eating. In retrospect Sue wondered if maybe she hadn't gotten sick too. You never know about cats. The vet only found the food allergy problem.

The big news in the house is our wood stove saga. The corner of the living room was attacked last week by my capable wife. She carefully ripped up carpet and put down cement backer board, then glued and grouted in the tiles we picked out at Home Depot a few weeks ago. All the tile cutting and everything was done by her, and the finished hearth pad was very nicely done! We brought the stove in the other day for the first time, and it looks pretty good sitting there!

After spending a little time in the attic, we found what Murphy's Law would have us find: The stove pipe was dead center on a roof truss in the ceiling if it went straight up. That means it has to move about a foot to one side to pass through all the attic and roof framing. Naturally it would have been too easy if it went straight up and out, right? That just adds additional required parts to what we should call the stovepipe/chimney puzzle.

I say "puzzle" because that's exactly what it is. There are several components out there in the wood stove world. John Q. Public really has no idea of what is needed to put such things together, and that's been frustrating us. I guess it's all for a good reason--It helps weed out the idiots that might burn their house down by installing something totally wrong. At any rate, there are lots of parts and pieces of the pipe/chimney system. They are all designed for specific reasons I suppose, but nothing is well explained. Several visits to stores over the weekend brought us a little closer to understanding the task. One thing that is frustrating is how the brands differ. One manufacturer's product may be completely different than another in it's design. Some manufacturer's say we need this, some say we need that, and none of them say why. The bottom line is that parts have been purchased and the process is underway.

Next: cutting a big hole into the attic!