Stoved out...

Back when we were planning to build the cabin addition, we decided to put in a basement first. So we dug a big hole, built the basement in it, then jacked up the cabin and moved it onto the basement. Kind of backwards, I know, but that's what happens when your hindsight is 20-20. At first we tried to heat the whole house with a wood stove in the basement, but that was a pain, constantly running up and down the stairs to check on and stoke the stove, so we put a Monitor oil stove in the basement and moved the wood stove back upstairs. That was over thirty years ago. Now, the company that produced the Monitor has stopped production. The local dealer switched to Toyo and no longer services the Monitor. So that was the conundrum, a stove that's worked great all these years, and still might have years left, is largely unserviceable. So after angsting over it for a year, decided to get a Toyo. But I checked out the other dealers in town, didn't want to go back to one who dropped the service, and bought it from a different one this time. I guess we'll see how that works out.

Jack Black likes the new stove just fine; it's a little bigger, so there's more room for him to hang out on it. It was kind of a pain to install, since everything was slightly different than the Monitor. But still, I got it working in a day. One real problem was the fuel line, the old one didn't fit and finally got it right after getting some help from a neighbor, the third time was the charm!