In Comes the Arctic

Here it is. The first days of real winter finally hitting. After such horrendous snow last year, we have had a really mild time of it this year, so far.
The last two nights have been brutal; sub zero and windy.

We have relied pretty much on the wood stove for heat, but have just been using the wood that was already lying about. We did finally fire up the furnace just before Christmas, as we were headed out of town to spend a couple of days with my daughters family and the grand kids, as well as two of my other boys.

We had a nice time, got home and settled in for a quiet New Years Eve. We actually stayed awake until midnight. :-) All was well with our little world.


January 2 things changed a bit. We were relaxing and reading after dinner, when the furnace made a strange sound, and blew out some K-1 fumes and expired. We looked at each other with that "you've got to be kidding me" look and jumped to see what was up. We opened the door like something might bite us, and tentatively pushed the reset button. It coughed (literally) it's diesel breath at us and ran for about all of 30 seconds and stopped again. Friday night. Go figure.

We assessed our woodpile to see what was usable and opted to wait until Monday morning to call the fuel company to come back and see what was happening. Of course, they were flat out with calls, as everyone seemed to have a furnace problem at that moment.

The tech got here Tuesday morning  (we were a bit groggy after a night of keeping the wood stove fed) and of course the blasted thing fired up and he just made a minor fuel adjustment. We were very happy campers. Heat with a flick of the wrist. Heaven. Unfortunately, heaven only lasted a matter of hours. Back he came again. This time, the verdict was to replace the pump, as it was the original. At forty five years old, I guess it didn't owe us anything at this point. As it turns out, the tech has his own business on the side, so we opted hire him to replace the unit for us at a much lower price.
So....here we are. It came in at nine below zero last night. The pipes partially froze and finally thawed at about two this afternoon. Thank God. We are steadfastly  stuffing only partially seasoned wood into the stove for another day until the tech can come give the ol' Miller furnace a makeover.

Starting to prime the walls. Underneath the filthy carpet
that we took up the sub-floor was in good shape.

A couple of coats of  primer in place and an
inexpensive rug for the time being. We were so
fortunate that this Skandia was already in place.

We've only just begun, I'm sure. Who said that
camping isn't fun?!

Stay tuned for the next update












from.......Our Vintage Villa

Toni and Will