A Long Day’s Work

Here is a cord of wood. Get stacking! The cord of wood was delivered first thing yesterday morning. Oh boy. It sure is going to be nice to have nice wood for our wood stove all winter. But, a cord of wood is a LOT of wood. I got bored with taking pictures of where we stacked it. The two piles I showed were the ones that Greg and the kids did before I joined them. They worked for 1/2 hour before I joined them and then we worked for another hour. We did two more stacks in front of the smaller one in the picture. Then, I took a big load into the house and then we did three more stacks on the front porch but finally all the wood is stacked and somewhat protected from the rain. Whew. That was a lot of work!

Greg has become a Craig’s List fan. We are starting (taking baby steps) into a Kitchen Remodel. We’ll do all the work ourselves and that’s probably why we’re taking baby steps — we’ve done this before in our old house. This kitchen is awful and so awful that we’ve stopped seeing just how awful it is. Step one has been replace the appliances. We did the cooktop first — a friend was remodeling her kitchen and gave us her old gas cooktop. It was in great condition and was stainless steel just like I wanted. Then we got a new dishwasher because the old one was ancient and didn’t work very well. Now, we needed a new oven. We had an ancient double oven which didn’t work — a roast chicken for example was a dicey business — might take 1/2 hour; might take 2 hours who knows. Greg found this one Craig’s List for about 1/2 what a new one from the appliance store would cost. It’s beautiful and . . . self-cleaning. Oh be still my heart! And, I have a big shelf for storage — it’ll be nice when Greg gets a door on it again, won’t it? Next in the appliance list, a microwave hood combo for over the cooktop. Lastly, we’ll get a new fridge but that’s a while out yet as mine is ugly but works great. Oh well. (Note Greg holding up the new Skil saw that he just HAD to have in order to do this job! 🙂 )

This is what we didn’t get to this weekend. Greg really liked my rock wall. So, he ordered more rocks. Lots more rock. We’re building two retaining walls in the front yard and then a raised bed in the backyard. Oh boy. Rock city! But, he didn’t realize that this is my crunch weekend where I am grading papers and preparing for report cards and parent conferences. Yikes! The rocks are just sitting. Maybe next weekend. I think we’ll hire our teenage nephew and a friend or two of his as well as putting my mother-in-law and myself to work. I promise to take pictures of our efforts! Aren’t you glad I didn’t take pictures of the piles and piles of papers I have to grade? Me too. But, I better get back to it!