New House Blog: Episode XXXXI - Into The Fire

Fire.  Scourge of Prometheus! Toaster of marshmallows!  Eradicator of deadwood... - Sideshow Bob

I love a good fire.  I can sit and watch a good fire the way some people can sit and watch The Simpsons on TV.  After the flames all die down I can sit and watch the hot coals glowing the way that hot coals are wont to do.  I love the heat that fires provide.  A good fire can warm a room or an entire house.  I love the warm, comforting atmosphere that a good fire provides.  Why does fire fascinate me so?  I don't know, but I'm glad we have a house with a fireplace - a wood-burning fireplace.  I love the crackle of burning wood, the sparks, the smells, the combusting of the wood that makes the fire.  I love the hot, glowing coals that are the after-effect of a good fire.  I love a good fire.

We'll talk more about fire later, but first let's meet some new team members.

New Team Members

Our first new team member today is Reggie, our lawn edger.  Reggie is a standard manual lawn edger, with an edging head that can be adjusted to one of three different edging angles.

Next up is our transfer shovel, Squarehead.  Squarehead is a standard square-headed transfer shovel.  You may have noticed that our shovels have names based primarily on their physical attributes - Longstaff, Shortspade, Scoop, Squarehead.  Becky does not understand the need for multiple shovels, but I have tried to explain that each shovel fulfills a different function.  I have been transferring a lot of dirt during my Back Yard Archaeology excavating.

New Recycled Workbench

We have a new workbench in the garage.  It is completely composed of recycled materials.  What this means is that each part of the workbench was previously in use somewhere else in the house, or else was found lying around somewhere inside or outside the house.  The base and support structure of the workbench used to be the vanity from the downstairs bathroom.  Here's a picture of it before removal from its former position, as seen in this Episode.

We deemed that this structure was sound enough and sturdy enough to work as the base of a small workbench.

The top piece, the actual work surface, is made from plywood that used to be part of the subfloor in the kitchen.  Some of the subfloor in the kitchen had to be replaced because of water damage, and a couple of the removed pieces were in good enough shape to be reused for non-flooring purposes.

Here is a picture of the old subfloor of the kitchen before it was repaired, as seen in this Episode.

The 2x4 used as the back board of the workbench was cut from a random 2x4 we found lying around outside the house.  It's a good piece of wood, so we kept it for future use.








Here are pictures of the completed workbench.  It is small, and the plan is to use it only until such time as we have built a larger, even more useful workbench in the garage.  In the short term, however, this will suffice.

No nails were used in the construction of this workbench.  We used wood screws that were reclaimed from other parts of the house.  We have recovered a lot of good, useful wood screws while fixing things up around our house.

Into The Fire

You may recall that in this Episode we had our fireplace and chimney inspected and fixed up a bit.  We decided that the time had come to have our first fire in our fireplace, since it finally stopped being summer here.  Before we could fire up the fireplace we had to get a new self-feeding grate, new fireplace tools, and a new fireplace screen.  We also had to check the Bay Area Air Quality Management District's website to see if it was okay to have a fire on the day we wanted to have a fire.  So far there have been no Spare the Air days declared, and we hope to be able to have many fires in the coming months.

Here is what the fireplace used to look like, as seen in this Episode.

Here is what it looks like now, with a good fire burning inside.

How many figurines can you identify?

The self-feeding grate helps to keep the heat level high and the smoke level low.  So far our fireplace has not been smokey at all.

Does anyone know how to clean old soot off of brick?

       bIsh