Back-Logging, Post-Dating, Post-Homelessness, Take Two

Buckets. of Sunshine and love.
How to Begin? Not at the beginning, that's for sure. Let's pick up right around the time it really started to get good- right around the time it really started to cook...

Saturday, November 7th we put in the chimney (most of it)!


Here's the hearth grouted. I put some green food coloring in to give it the weird soft pastel color. It's growing on me.

The chimney arrived in three shipments. The first two boxes may have actually made it to the house proper doorstep on Wednesday, possibly Thursday November 5th. Another two came a few days later.

and Holy Hell was I ready for them. The first nights in the house were cold. Very cold. I slept in some clothes and even threw my leather jacket on top of the blankets to help out. Sophie only slept with me a few of those days, Emily's bed was much more comfortable I'm sure. Yet the weekend came on fast and strong. Patrick came Saturday morning to help install the chimney.

That morning, I blocked in the cieling support box with extra 2 x 8s and got everything leveled and plumb. I don't own a plumb bob, but the movie-prop orange window weights did a good job of hanging on a rope to help center the stove.


these are "movie-prop orange" window weights. They are heavy and manufactured for the sole purpose of pulling down on string.



We had to finish the roof before the chimney was completed because there was a good sized-hole in it still, which took a good portion of the day. It was no different than before, cut styrofoam, nail it in, cut plywood, screw it in- although we were out of the long 4'' screws. By chance I had bought a box of 3 1/2'' nails, they worked fine for tacking the plywood in place. Tarpaper and shingles followed.


This is a view of the support box installed with the slip connector and stove pipe. Light is visible from outside, the plywood hasn't been installed yet.


Patrick working out the plywood situation. The support box is what is defining this square hole. It had to be trimmed flush with the roof so that the flashing would fit on top.

The circular saw had just finished its job for the day when the power cord got caught under the blade gaurd while it was slowing down and got all cut up. I think Patrick felt bad about it, and at first I was bummed, but it really is no big deal. I'll let you readers know when I fix it.


Oops. I'm tempted to fix this myself (it wouldn't be hard), but I'd like to use and abuse this saw for the next decade and wouldn't mind having it professionally done. I've asked everyone if they know an electrician, but no one does. A dying breed perhaps? I should start hanging out around tech schools.


Sophie is wondering how she can get on the roof and chill with us.

Stove install was fairly simple. I didn't have to seal anything, and didn't have to cut anything save one exception- The cieling support box stuck out the top of the roof about a whole foot. It seemed that this was designed this way, but the flashing provided was only large enough to fit over the chimney, not the support box. Had I been able to see these parts earlier, it wouldn't have been difficult to adjust the order so that cutting off the top of the box wouldn't have been necessary. It was a bummer, by far the most frustrating part of the day, trying to cut off the top of this black metal box sticking out of my roof. Finally we decided it needed to be un-installed to be cut. It all went better once I had access to all sides, and then I re-fit it and reattached the rest of the chimney assembly.


Flashing pictured right of Pat. It does not fit over the support box.

The collar attachment simply slipped over the flue of the stove. The black stovepipe lengths had male-female connecting ends. Those joints were secured by three sheet metals screws. There was a special slip-collar length of pipe which could shorten or lengthen the stove pipe hieght so that the pipe could be installed after the support box and create the perfect length at the same time. See the Stove Install link for diagrams and detailed instructions. Mine is the "BX26E, Standard Boxwood"


This stuff just slides together. Like it was built that way. It was hard to mess up. I highly reccommend owning a wood stove sometime.


It looks like this thing is ready to roll! What could possibly go wrong?

That's when I realized we were out of chimney pieces. There was no double-wall chimney to go out the top of the roof! I called Northline Express and left a message. It was a serious bummer. My order was missing a 48'' piece of double-wall chimney, the bread and butter of the whole shabang. Later on Monday I got a hold of them. It turns out the chimney was damaged during shipping, so it wasn't delivered... why didn't they call, or solve the problem then? Companies need to be bringing their a-game, it a depression, come on. Their service team on the phone was always really nice though, that more than made up for the late delivery.

It's unbelievable how much power one can weild simply by being nice.


be nice for christ's sake.