This Week With Jane and Charley: Splitting Firewood, Staining the House, Getting Stuck in the Slider

(Here’s what’s happening in our world this week, including the continuing adventures of Charley, the little black cat that Tim sent me the day after he passed. Read all about her shenanigans here. -jb)

This week in our world, we’re continuing our outdoor work on house and woodlot projects before snow flies (or, in my case, before it rains next week). I finished splitting, moving and stacking the mountain of wood I didn’t get to last year, so I’m feeling pretty good about that.

My next goal was to split and stack the wood from the tree that my brother Dean and I hauled up to the house after it fell in my driveway earlier this year. Here’s a picture of that from June. You can see the mountain of wood next to the tree – that’s all been stacked, thank goodness. I’ve been working on it in between Gazette stories throughout the summer.

Dean cut it into big chunks in June, and yesterday I started splitting those chunks into firewood. So far so good! I’ve done six chunks so far, and have 11 to go — plenty to fill the rest of the woodlot.

The golden rule for moisture content of firewood is 15 to 20 percent. This tree is around 9 percent, so maybe a little on the dry side, but I’ll use it to get a hot fire going in the morning. Freshly cut wood, known as green wood, can contain 30 to 60 percent moisture, depending on the tree species.

I’ve still got a small pile of wood from the farm on the other side of the house, but won’t stress if it doesn’t get split and stacked this year. I’ll have enough without it. Here’s a couple minutes of me splitting that wood that started out as a tree in my driveway.

And here’s what the woodlot currently looks like. I’ve got one more 8-foot metal frame to put together, along with two 4-foot frames that I’ll use for kindling. You can see I’ve moved over to this side of the woodlot, so I’m making progress.

Staining the House

I’m also working on the house-staining project — which is going into its second year and will go through at least next year (hey, maybe I’ll get TWO walls done next year). Last year, I trial-and-errored my way through the east wall of the house. It’s a process with a log home — power-wash the logs, spray with insecticide to keep the bugs and birds from feasting on it, fill the cracks with “Log Builder,” stain the logs, and fix the chinking.

I overestimated the time I’d have last year, so I ended up power-washing two sides of the house, but only got one stained before snow flew and it got too cold. So I’ve had bare wood — ack! — on one side of the house for a year, and MUST get that stained this year. The weather looks ok this week through Monday, when it’s supposed to rain. I’ve done the prep work, so I think I can get that stained before Monday.

Here’s the south wall after getting sprayed with insecticide — which I really don’t like to use, but I can’t have every woodpecker and carpenter bee in the county attacking my house.

I also used a really crappy sprayer for the insecticide last year, so decided to invest in a nice rechargeable sprayer this year. I absolutely love this thing.

Yesterday I was really missing Tim, so I drove to Haserot and took a picture of the moonrise over Old Mission Harbor. He loved this beach so much, so I often drive down there (ok, pretty much every day) and listen to the waves like we used to do.

Shedding, Getting Stuck in the Slider, Waiting at the Front Door

As for Charley, she’s been very busy shedding an entire cat’s worth of fur every day. Here she is inspecting the ball of fur I brushed out of her in one sitting. It’s bigger than her head.

Sometimes she gets stuck in the slider in the living room. Please ignore my dirty windows.

And amuses herself by covering herself up with a blanket.

If I’ve been outside too long without coming in to check on her and pet her, she waits at the front door for me. Again, ignore dirty window.

Also Read…

This Week With Jane and Charley: Revamping the Woodlot and Prepping for Winter