Three wood stoves

Yes, three. It's a very old house, what can I say? No insulation, we're down to the original floor and walls in all but one and a half rooms. Drafty. But it sure is cozy when all three stoves are burning hot and you've got your slippers on and a nice hot cup of tea. With honey. Of course. (the only reason for bees, is to make honey, and the only reason for honey is for me to eat it! sigh-ned, Pooh Bear)



We have one wood-burning cook stove in the kitchen. A Home Comfort stove, circa 1930's. It's white, and works quite nicely for warming the kitchen and for cooking and baking (as long as you put whatever-it-is-you're-baking on the BOTTOM shelf, as the heat comes from the top of the oven.) and just looks nice.



The next stove is ...uh, just a rectangle box. And it works the best. It's in the breezeway (or, hallway, in old farmhouse speak) and keeps our bedroom and little monkey's bedroom nicely chill-free for the most part.



The third stove is a new addition as of today. We traded our neighbor for it. We had a fireplace insert stove with a fan-blower thingie on it. And he needed it. We didn't-so-much need the fan/blower because it was in our bedroom, so really, it would sorta heat us out of the room. Anyways, he had a smallish, square, ornate little stove with little glass windows in the door, and two 'burners' on top. Perfect. Quaint. And smaller than the fireplace insert stove, so we have a bit more room in the bedroom. Nice. Warm. And, don't tell the nieghbor, but this one smokes less when you open the door to chuck wood in. (they ALL smoke, these wood stoves, but some are worse than others.)

I see in the weather forecast that next week will be warmish. 80. By December-in-North-Carolina standards that is HOT'ish. And I will revel in it. I'll take this opportunity to do other things than manage three stoves all day long. Like clean out the goat-stall in the barn, put shavings in and get ready for a kid. Or two. Good thing there isn't the need for a wood-stove in the barn.

Life is good. Heating with wood is messy, and a lot of work. But MUCH easier than forking out a car-payment like sum of money to the electric company during the winter.

Before and After

We started in March of 2007 on this house. Here are a couple miscellaneous "work in progress" pictures.

This is the dining room floor, which, when we bought the house, had a layer of tongue and groove wood flooring over it. We reclaimed the wood flooring, and made the new porch with it. What we were left with was the original heart pine tongue and groove wood floor. It hadn't seen any TLC in many, many years. We used boiled linseed oil and rubbed it in. Then we repeated that in another month or so. It's still a bit rough in spots, but it's not as splintery as it was before we put linseed oil on it. It really brings out the beauty of the wood. There is no insulation under this floor and you can see daylight in some spots. Character I say. Or, entry way, the mice would say.

We've finally completely linseeded all of the flooring in the house, and I must say, I don't know why we waitied so long, except that boiled linseed oil is $16.00 a gallon and it takes about a half-gallon per floor. We did linseed the breezeway walls, and the trim also. Beautiful. I have truly been back 117 years.

More to come....

Random Fieldmouse Thoughts

I had a bunch of things I wanted to write yesterday, but in keeping with field-mouse-ology, I forgot most of them overnight and then this morning, can't remember any of them. Must be the cold night air.

There's been a lot of mice, I'm sure, in this old farmhouse. The pantry is a popular hangout, as evidence left leaves one to assume that there might be more than one visiting regularly.

Oh that reminds me, I stepped on one night before last. Yes, I said I stepped on a mouse. I'm assuming he was in there gathering some more dog food to put neatly in a pile in the corner for me to find later. And some more for his friends. But, alas, he gathers no more.

They seem to come inside in the winter, and I for one, can't blame them. I didn't want to be inside this old farmhouse this summer either. The hottest summer on record in who-knows-how-long.

But this post really wasn't supposed to be about mice. This just shows how my self-appointed-stolen-fair-and-square nickname of "fieldmouse brain" fits so aptly. It matches the farmhouse decor. Or is that aura? I can't remember.

Living in a 117 year old farmhouse isn't for sissies. It's occasionally annoying, sometimes fun, and always makes one grateful for the comforts in this technology-laden era in which we dwell.

This is my blog about living in a farmhouse. And everything that goes along with it, which can be confusing and sometimes misleading. And always at least slightly entertaining.

Now that we've been informally introduced. I'm going to post a picture. Somewhere. If I can remember how.