Meet Bernie

Bernie meet the Blog readers.  Blog readers, meet Bernie.   We’ve had Bernie for 2 months now, there have been a few rocky patches, but I still love him!  We usually keep the house at 64 in the winter (except when I just can’t stand it and bump it up a tiny bit), last year our heating bill got up to $400 a month!  Now I might be ok with it if I was toasty warm, but I was FREEZING every day!  I knew we had to do Something!  We’ve talked about getting a wood furnace add on before, but we never went anywhere with it.  This year I brought it up, kinda just joking around, and Deric was all on board.  And after a bunch of research and deal hunting we found the one we wanted.  We were told that it would be a week to order it, but I asked them to see if they had any in stock and they did!   We brought it home the next day (we didn’t bring the trailer with us since we were supposed to order it), and installed it the next day (I think).  You are supposed to season it by having tiny fires and building up to small ones, and keep getting them bigger and letting it cool in between.  Granted there was the incident the first day I used the stove on my own…  but I don’t want to talk about it.  (FYI I still don’t add wood before getting in the shower!  Ha!  I must be scarred!)

Look, it’s hot in here! *grin*  Actually that’s nothing, it was 76 (on accident) yesterday!

Ok, so these pictures are a bit scary…  It’s the scary basement!  I’ve called the basement that since we moved in.  I guess it isn’t that bad, but the paint on the walls and floors are chipping and the ceiling is really low (and full of cobwebs).  I just don’t like it down here, yuck!

After a few other issues we had last week I put the table cloth over the window… there’s nothing like standing in the basement in sight of the neighbors in the middle of the night! 

Our wood pile.  The pile we have now (we stacked it Sunday) was all the way up to the ceiling!  The pile in the picture only lasted about 2 weeks, hopefully this stack will last a bit longer.

One really great thing is it makes a great place to dry all the kids snow clothes, and daddy’s too!

Although, Daddy’s clothes hanging there scare the crap out of me at night.  They totally look like someone is standing there! 

The one good thing about not having the stove upstairs is that we can keep this stuff just as it is.  There is no way I’d have a cardboard box full of newspaper, and a Rubbermaid of kindling sitting in my family room!

…or a stack of wood either!  Don’t you love the laundry basket for toting the wood!

This is our old wood stove… ha!  The two are so different!!  (It was so cozy though!)