We had some snow the week before christmas, so it was nice, everybody had a good time. Sweep did his best Christmas dog impression and Max ran around in the snow like an idiot. But he was a happy idiot, so it's always fun!
Lastly, the railing on the porch got started, but it work out there has largely been called due to cold, snow and laziness. We got most of the parts made and painted (which is always fun, painting in the basement, the sewing room, anywhere it's warm enough), but we've decided to hold off on finishing until things warm up. It should only be a couple of months! Either way, I figured you'd like to see some pictures of what it looks like! There's still a little yellow cross piece that needs to be added, but you get the idea. The panels are 3/4" PT plywood, cut with a jigsaw, and the panels fit into dado's cut in the 2x4 frames. It's relatively simple, but takes about 30 minutes to cut out a single panel. We've cut all of the full size panels and got about 1/2 of them installed.
Lastly, we got a ton of "Envi-8" blocks delivered today. They're basically giant wood pellets.
Each one is about 3"x3"x10" long, weigh about 8 pounds and they are just compressed sawdust and other recycled wood product, just like a wood pellet. I would like to see the monster that is used to smash these things into shape!They contain no filler, so they can be safely burned in a wood stove (even a catalytic wood stove), and since they are all recycled wood, they are a nice environmental compromise for a wood stove. My neighbor had bought them and gave a couple for me to try and they burn nice and hot and with very little ash. Unfortunately, I had to move a ton (no really, they came on a pallet and the unit of delivery is 1 ton), or about 600 logs onto the deck, through the kitchen and down into the basement. Ugh. The only downside to these is that the place we got these from they come in pre-packaged blocks of 8. Which is a little silly. So each group of 8 blocks comes in a little shrink-wrapped package? Heh? We'll get our act together better next year and try to get them w/o the packaging! Now I have this pile in my basement!
Hope you all had a great holiday!
