Christmas Shopping

 Little by little, the shop looks less like a dump and more like a...well, a shop. I have extended the vacuum ducting to the router table, so that's the planer, tablesaw and router all hooked up. This greatly reduces the amount of sawdust. There is still much to do but since June I've managed to complete many improvements, the greatest being the Stalin-like purge of much of the junk from the place. The huge collection of windows is not packed neatly away in the closet under the stairs, together with most of the shutters. I just have to deal with the overhead rack for long stock and it will start to look like something respectable. More or less.

The Heat Is On

 The old pellet stove is in suprisingly good condition for a relic more than a quarter century old. With the elm tree out of the way, there is room for a horizontal chimney between the sunporch and the window. With a fire on, it looks remarkably cozy. It's still chilly as the dickens, but now there is a place to warm up one's numbed fingers after working with the cold, cold tools!

Tree Go!

The elm by the workshop has been troubling me for years. This morning I set out to dismantle the sump pump because the temperature dipped to about -9C last night; I worried I might already be too late. However, I found the pump churning away quite happily. As I studied the discharge pipe, which emerged amidst the sucker growth on the elm, I noticed that there was not a breath of wind--exactly the sort of day I had been waiting for, and quite surprising after about 18 hours of violent winds, starting in the wee hours of Monday. I sharpened my trusty Husqy, and set to work. I cut an open-faced notch, and then dropped the elm quite neatly between two red pines. 

As a bonus, the butt came to rest above the sump pump line without crushing it in the least!

Soon the tree will become firewood. I'm quite curious about how it will burn. I might just stack it in the "wet" end of the woodshed, because our woodpiles are tarped for the winter. I think we have about two cords of seasoned wood left in the shed--I hope it's enough! Winters are so unpredictable.

Winter Kitchen

The kitchen wall is now wired, insulated, vapor barriered, and drywalled. Now we can start demolishing the interior walls, and that should be rather simpler. 

First Snow

 We made it to the second week of November--not bad! We'll see if this decides to become a permanent resident or just plow on through.