Been cleaning up--and out--the cellar, prior to installing a (gasp) oil burner. I'm not entirely keen on the idea of oil, but reality, which often leaves tooth marks, says, well, you ain't gettin' any younger, and after last winter, well...
I did the math on it, and we burned about 14 cords of wood. It was a long winter, and an evenly cold one: no Indian Summer around Thanksgiving, no January thaw two months later, unless you consider two days of 20 degrees as a "thaw". Even now, in the first week of May, we are still having two stoves going and below freezing temps at night. Even last year we had low fires well into June, to get the house up to temperature in the mornings.
We aren't doing away with the wood, or the stoves. I see radiators as an adjunct to the wood, not 'instead of"'. But the cellar needed to be reclaimed, since it has become the storage room for anything we hadn't the heart or energy to put elsewhere. Too good to throw out (roof shingles, lumber, paint) but not good enough to want to use. Yet. The roof shingles were left over from the roof we put on 40 years ago, and rather than take them to the
(We are both low-level hoarders (meaning if we can foresee a 'maybe' future for something, we keep it) and recyclers, so much of what we keep is salvage that eventually finds a home with someone else or can be recycled. i.e., by the end of the summer I usually have a ridiculous amount of cardboard, paper, and scrap wood carefully tucked away. That, in addition to the cardboard generated all winter by cartons, cereal boxes and six pack containers, usually doesn't last much beyond January. All those fire starters, you know. )
It's a dampish cellar with a dirt floor, so cardboard and metal don't last long without turning into worthless bits, and after deciding which bits can be disposed of and which should be used elsewhere, we are now able to walk across much of it without impaling ourselves.
My biggest gripe is going to be rearranging the furniture to not block the radiators. These are the old fashioned (serious) cast iron radiators, rather than baseboard. I grew up with radiators, and they can be amazingly handy for drying mittens, raising bread dough, or even, golly, heating a room. And I must admit, it would be nice in mid-January to wake at 2 AM and hear the furnace click on, and know I don't have to get up, after all.
It's also a bit annoying, frankly, because after finally replacing the dining room ceiling and new east wall, I spent the entire winter and summer moving large furniture from this room to that room, trying to create a balance. And it looks like we get to do it again this year, too. Oh, GOOD.
When we upgraded our window screens to replace the old very heavy wood storms, we started taking them to the dump. Each trip that day found the previous load gone. Then a neighbor said, wait those are yours? Why don't I collect the rest direct and save mileage? Which he did, and made some lovely cold frames out of them.
ReplyDeleteI think it's a great idea to have the extra heat source. Lugging wood is heavy work. You might as well save your energy for something more fun. Like moving furniture..
i long for those old wood storms, the newer ones are aluminum, and they do a wonderful job of conducting cold in, and keeping the outside of the inside window clean.
DeleteOf course, to clean them properly entails removing both sashes and finding the stepladder, and it's more work than it's worth.
I agree, reluctantly, about the extra heat. But in the winter that's often the only exercise I get, dragging wood in from the shed.
It's also the upset to the entire downstairs, since I finally have it the way I like it, and at some point I am going to have to give away furniture. Ow.
In the meantime he's down cellar chipping holes in the clay floor, to pour a cement pad for the oil burner AND the oil tank. 'Tis going to be a terribly long expen$ive $ummer...
It is a good to think of winter comfort now so you don’t have to go through another hard winter. It seems like the cold is with us longer and longer and warmth becomes more needed. Good luck in getting it all done.
ReplyDeleteMany of us are low level hoarders, but won’t admit to it. Our piles tell a different story. I am doing better and have slowly gotten rid of many items that I thought would be used again. As a matter of fact, I finally threw away my bikinis from the 70’s when I was in my 20’s.. They were not anything I would want to hand down to my grandchildren nor do I think they would want to imagine me wearing. Why do we hang on to yesterdays.
We did get quite used to 65 deg. and absolutely hysterical when the thermometer reached 70, which was usually just about bed time. We will be burning wood, since I cook with it, just not as much, nor as desperately.
DeleteOh, I admit to hoarding, it's my gesture to recycling, and the pleasure of unearthing a just-the-right-size screw, or bottle cap, or storage container is worth the effort.
And to be fair, I've been reading my way through all the books I've accumulated over the last 50 years, and have probably donated at least 200 to the Salvation Army. More to go. It's funny, how your taste in authors changes over time. I've developed the 'one chapter' rule--if I can't keep focus for an entire chapter, out it goes. boy, does that cover a mess of books...
i love that style of radiators so much. we had some wonderful ones at our old place that were downright artistic in their design, and i was sorry to see them go when we moved to our current place (which has very non-inspiring baseboard style electric heating).
ReplyDeleteas for the 'low level hoarding'... totally understand. it feels wrong to get rid of stuff that you know can be put to use elsewhere. the problem is when you make plans... that are quickly forgotten the moment all that stuff disappears into a storage space. best to just leave it where someone else might see it and choose to drag it into their own 'low level hoarding' space. think of it as spreading the love.
I grew up with cast iron radiators, and yeah, they are far more interesting than baseboard, any day, which warms, but rarely entertains.
ReplyDeleteI am, for the record, enthusiastically opposed to radiators at all, and my biggest concern is that my husband, otherwise known as Mr. Engineer, will have us so bogged down with radiators (if one is good, why, two is even better...) we will have to move half the furniture out of the rooms. Sigh. Deep, pathetic sigh.
We always have that sense that sooner or later that really nice flat piece of oak tabletop will come in handy, or the chair rockers from a chair that died years ago...or that jar of square cut nails...
I really hate to do that to someone else, frankly.
The real problem comes when that interesting board just happens to fit that hard-to-fit corner, or that lovely wooden crate is perfect for a woodbox, or something Other. It makes all the jars and cartons full of 'what was I thinking" stuff somehow justifiable.