Yes, I’m still here…..

The Labor Day 3-day weekend finally gave me the opportunity to get some things done that I have been wanting to do. I still have a big project for work that needs to get done (turning a discarded airplane into a usable flight simulator) but that went on hold so I could get some things of my own accomplished.

First things first, on Saturday noon I went and looked at a couple pieces of property. There ware some parcels with definite possibility, but I’m waiting to look at another property that caught my eye also. All of these were 40 acres or larger and I’m beginning to think that I may be happier with the extra room that 40 acres has. More of a ‘buffer’ between me and other people and I can let friends ‘camp’ out occasionally if they want and not feel like they are too close to the house. Not to mention more room to hide small outbuildings for various hobbies. lol.

One of the things I have been keeping my eye out for is a small wood burning heat stove in case I ever do get property. I bought a wood/coal cook stove/oven project last year and it is well under way on it’s overhaul. The cook stove is a 1920’s Wedgewood and was in deplorable shape. Barely any of the original color was left on it but the cast iron cooking surface and the oven door were in amazing shape. I’ll make a separate post about that oven in a few days, but I still didn’t have a wood heater. Saturday morning before going to look at property I took a look at Harbor Freight to check prices on the little cast iron box-heater I had been keeping my eye on. I was waiting for it to go on sale since I had one of the 20% coupons they put out about once a month to really save some cash and I had to drive to at least Gilroy to get one since they can’t be sold in the Central Valley (F* the air quality a**holes). As it turns out, Harbor Freight doesn’t seem to carry the wood burning stoves anymore so I was starting to get unhappy and decided to check Craigslist for anything local from a private seller. The third ad down the page after a ‘wood stove’ search turned up a buy I just couldn’t pass up. In the picture was a beautiful little free standing Wedgewood heater, and the person was asking only $50!! I scrutinized the pics he had on the ad looking for a reason it was so under-priced, but this heater looked like it was off a factory showroom. Needless to say I made a call, got directions to see it, and then went and picked up my dad on the way to the sellers house. When we got there the seller was really nice. Seems the stove was more of a furniture piece than heater and had barely been used. It had been moved to the garage since his girlfriend was redoing the house and he wanted the space to park his truck again. I gave it a quick look over and promptly handed the guy $50, I wasn’t even going to haggle on it since the original enamel was all pristine except where they had set things on the upper grates and the mica windows were broke out. Dad and I loaded it up and celebrated all the way home.

As usual you can click on the pics for a bigger version. Overall, I think I like this a LOT better than a little black cast iron stove. Oh, and the mica to make new windows shipped out today, another $50 but well worth it.