Wood to Burn

Continuing with some posts of other things we've been doing the last few months during the breezeway build - a well-organized log rack. Last October, our rotting oak tree gave us one last gift (well, I guess technically the tree removal service did this part for us, but you get the idea):

We moved it to the backyard to age for a while (and to get away from the house - can anyone say "termites"?). D realized that splitting logs is quite a physical challenge, but made great headway, splitting about half of them before we moved them to the back.

And they sat - on the edge of our patio in messy piles since November. We committed a blog faux pas and forgot to take a picture of that mess, but trust me, they were everywhere.

In the meantime, D excavated an old log rack from the back of our yard where the previous owners had left it dented, broken, and half buried in debris, dirt, and leaves. After several unsuccessful guesses at the size bolts needed to repair it, he finally came home with the right hardware and reassembled it a few weeks ago. Then it was a job of careful stacking:

I love it and am so excited to have all this beautiful wood to burn this winter. We got our chimney cleaned too, so we are ready to go.

One odd point of the chimney cleaning - the chimney sweep said that we needed some concrete repairs at the top. We aren't sure we believe him and definitely would want a second option and some pictures, given that we had the top of the chimney totally rebuilt in 2011 after our raccoon visitor. Either way, it didn't sound like something we have to do this year, so we'll file that one away for later.