Gonna be busy

1/21/08 Monday
This is going to be a busy day. By the way, I don’t think an hour had gone buy since I posted yesterday about only needing a bit over a hundred dollars to buy the chimney stuff that someone stopped by and wrote us a check to cover it. Mathew 6:26 says “Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap yet your heavenly Father takes care of their needs” or something like that. We have been blessed and are grateful for the love shown us. It is a good witness of their faith.

It will be a busy day. Eric can access a trailer we can use to pick up siding from Christmas in Action. Today will be warm, up to sixty degrees, which is practically T-shirt weather for me. A good day for working on this house. It gets cold again tomorrow but nothing like the temperatures we have had the last few days. So I may not be posting much today. We did buy the chimney stuff yesterday so that’s done.
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Well, of course it’s not going to be easy. We got all the things needed to repair the damage and put up the chimney. I rented a trailer but upon getting to Christmas in Action found that Bob had lots of cut offs from the siding that would work just fine and I could fit them in the back of the truck. I took the trailer back and he refunded the payment. Saved us another forty bucks.

So I’m home opening up the boxes in the chimney kit. Oops! This won’t work. The chimney is set up to run about two inches from the wall with the support and braces all at that distance. Unfortunately the roof’s overhang is ten and a half inches. So I need to figure out how to do this. The old chimney had braces I fabricated but they won’t work on this new stuff. I’ve got all night to think about it. Reading the installation book shows me there is more to putting this in than the old one. I’ll have to make a frame for the thimble within the studs. There’s a few other things it shows as well that I’ll have to consider. I think I’ll need to buy one more piece of pipe, a twelve inch long one. There was only one left at Tractor supply. What I really need is another nine inch one like was in the kit for going through the wall but I didn’t see any there. Perhaps I can order it but that will hold everything up and leave us without heat till it arrives. But we’re handling it just fine. Just imagine what the early settlers endured and for that matter even those of my grandmother’s generation. Chuck and Lillian’s house was built by his grandparents and there was no insulation at all. We are just used to being coddled when it comes to personal comfort. Most of the rest of the world is in far worse shape than we are without the wood stove. Going without just toughens you up and makes you stronger.