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10/24/2006: "The Quest for the Woodstove: Part One"

Kurt, Nate, and I have all had a common dream of having a wood cook stove. A toasty warm stove, throwing off heat while being broad enough to cook on, large enough to hold a turkey, strong enough to last forever, and practical enough to be independent of electricity. Kurt bought the beautiful thing and it’s been sitting in the garage for over a month now.

Why the wait, you ask? We needed to tile and reinforce the floor. So we had to get jacks to lift the floor supports, and set them in place. We had to not only pick out tile, a major task in and of itself, but also coordinate a time for Kurt to be here to show me how to do it. After much back and forth communication, color matching over the internet, and visit from Tahnya at the Tile Store, we figured it out. So Friday I went and picked up the tile, only to find out they didn’t have it in stock. So, I rummaged through random slate slabs and put together a beautiful assortment of squares, though I found out later it wasn’t quite what Kurt had in mind, and would cause problems down the road… But anyways, I picked it out and Kurt came down for a visit.

Kurt arrived late Friday night. Saturday morning we prepared to tile! First we had to move the fridge. Easy right? Oh no… We had to remove the copper water line from the fridge, run it back down through the floor into the basement, then rewind it back up into the kitchen. This involved unscrewing some little thingamerbobber that then didn’t want to re-screw back on without a lot of sandpaper work. I also managed to find a live wire that hadn’t been capped. I found it with my right temple, and let me tell you, that was a nice heart check.

Anyways, after a bit of wrangling and a trip to the dreaded Home Depot, we managed to get what we needed and get the fridge into its new home. Kurt and I started on the floor. It turns out that Kurt hadn’t realized I’d bought slate rather than ceramic tile, which will need a little bit of special treatment and a unique tool to cut it. So we have to rent the tool. We decided just to do what needed to be done for the chimney installation to proceed. The plan was to install the chimney on Tuesday, so there was a lot of pressure Saturday to be prepared for that.

Here's Kurt carefully cutting the backer-board.

We then took off the backer-board, mixed up a bunch of mortar, then slopped it all over the floor. Next we put the backer-board back down, properly cut to fit the odd turn in the wall. We screwed that in, then slapped on more mortar. Here's a picture of Kurt playing "Twister" with the mortar, "left foot wood, right hand mortar?"

We carefully placed the beautiful tiles in their homes. We’ll grout later, probably around the legs of the stove.
Here's a picture of us with the finished project, as of Saturday afternoon. (I'm trying to put the little cross shaped spacers in my eyes, and they keep falling out.)


Kurt needed to hit the road, so Nate and I finished up the tiling. We’ve decided to tile the kitchen floor. It’s a really neat old hardwood floor, but it’s in pretty rough shape. We chose a nice medium cream tile to continue out from the darker, soot-hiding hearth. We’ll finish the rest of the kitchen floor at some other time.

Next time… The Moving of the Stove. Our story continues…