No, I am not adopting a child. I am tempted by the puppy...but not right now. What I am showing you here is my newest home project: a wood stove. Currently, my only heat and cooking sources all rely on electricity--even the LP furnace is dependent on electricity to fire and run the fan cycle. This is not the greatest, as if we ever (1) ran out of LP as a natural resource or (2) start having electrical issues with the local power supply, I am completely screwed. This house stays pretty warm, but give it a few hours with no power, and everything gets far too frosty for comfort. As well, there is the minor factor of I like to eat, and you can't eat everything raw. It's that small issue with e coli and his nefarious friends, you know. I also, quite simply, miss wood heat. While it was a pain having the chore of stacking wood, hauling wood, or filling the endlessly empty wood box as a child, it was a nice way to get warm. It was friendly sounding, too, with the crackle and hiss of wood flames and pinky-pinging of expanding warm metal.
This afternoon, I met a very nice chimney expert, who also sells and installs stoves. My house is so teeny tiny (800 square feet of liveable area) I was a bit worried that either I wouldn't be able to have a stove at all (due to lack of adequate space), or I would wind up with a giant one that would cook me outta the cottage. But it sounds like a small, very efficient stove (with a cooktop on it! Waaaaaaaaay excited about that) will fit in the former-porch-now-office-and-dog-space. He even commented it was a fairly perfect location for a stove. Wow, I wasn't expecting perfection! He's going to work up a quote and email it to me, and sometime late spring/early summer my new stove will be installed. Yay!
On a note of mild consternation, he said that my roof was in horrible shape and needs replacing. And the old chimney stack is about ready to fall off, but it'll stay there for a while longer. Yikes. Oh well. Who needs a long, exotic vacation? I think I'll be happy with a tidy new roof (before next winter).
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