Attempted socialing and work work
Dec. 15th, 2025 08:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
unicorndukeI attempted to do social things twice this weekend and neither attempt happened. Saturday was an SCA event, but I looked at the weather and our wood levels and decided that I needed to split wood on Saturday instead. It was the only day that even approached near freezing, it hovered around 30F with only a little wind. In contrast, yesterday was 25F with 10-20 mph winds. Freezing cold, I was displeased, today is also supposed to be windy.
So Saturday, I split wood. I had to chainsaw a lot of the logs as I went since the bobcat can only pick up 16 foot lengths and the logs we had delivered were 32. That warmed me up nicely for sure. Nothing wanted to start and run well since it was so chilly first thing in the morning. Once I did that, I started with our outdoor burner wood, I split big logs into big chunks in the back of the dump trailer. This is probably two weeks of wood. We split this pretty much as big as we can lift, although I like a eight inch diameter log to be split in half for ease of throwing into the burner. Once it gets heavier, it is hard to throw it to the back of the burner.
Then I split three bags of wood for maple syrup production. Ideally this is split to be wrist size because it will burn hotter. We have a six way split on the wood processor which does an okay job, but a lot of the splits fall away from the bulk bags, so it's more getting out of the skidsteer and throwing them into the bags which isn't a bad thing to help keep warmer. The four way splitter is better because I can pop it up and down against the ground and release the stuck logs that way and they usually get into the bags. I'll have to explain the setup for the bags at some point because it's a great set up for getting firewood into a forkable format with the tools we have. We need around 10 cords of wood for syrup production, and each bag holds approximately 0.4 cords, so we need 25 bags. Right now, we've got seven drying in storage, and as long as I keep up my wood production of 3-4 bags every week or so, we'll be good to go for February. We also don't have that many bags (I think we have 12?), we'd have to pick up more but my parents have never managed to work this far ahead on splitting either, so we're doing good. We have a used airline baggage cart that we can load by hand with more wood and another wood tote plus we can probably find more used bags somewhere too.
The wood processor for the skidsteer is a phenomenal piece of equipment that is incredible to use. Really splits fast. Not great at anything that isn't a straight piece of wood with no splits but we can get those pretty easy. It's best feature is that we can lift it up and split into things, so I lifted it high enough that I split directly into the trailer.
I also split for our indoor wood stove which have to be a certain length that is shorter than the logs for the other two uses and can be larger than the maple logs but not too much larger. These I loaded into one of our wood totes which is one of those plastic tote/metal cube situations that I cut two sides out and the plastic in half to make a roof. I can't load it super full since the tractor we have the forks on can't pick it up super full, but that will be two weeks or so of indoor wood. It's still decently wet from being outside, but the wind should help dry it out now that it's covered. It burns terribly. But that's to be expected, we need to work ahead more for this wood. And I will! Next splitting day, I'll probably do another tote and get it drying ahead before we need it.
Wood specs:
Yesterday I spent the morning forking the wood into storage and finished up splitting the tote since I didn't quite have enough. We had gotten an inch or so of snow overnight but no one was really expecting it, so the plows didn't get out until later in the morning. It was bitter cold and even bundled up with a scarf, my whole face was freezing pretty quickly. I got warmed up and hit the road for the local spinner's guild, la dee da. Five minutes away from the location, I wondered if they had cancelled and lo and behold, they had. To be fair, they had posted and emailed about it earlier in the day but I didn't think to check since it was only an inch of snow and the plows would have taken care of it by 1pm. But they had to make the call, so I wasn't that bothered. I stopped by the hardware store and got paint and painting supplies and headed home. I was a little sad about not having it, I was looking forward to it. But these things happen.
I came home and looked at the old office/new crafting room.
This is before, the walls are peachy tan and dirty as all get out, the carpet is tan and dingy. I got my plan figured out and spent the evening working on it, removed all the stuff in the way (misc items, nails, faceplates), washed the walls and scraped tape, patched the holes, and pulled up the carpet and under carpet. The dust under the carpet was incredible. I had to bang the filter on the shop vac clean twice to get it all up. But, now look at it! You can't see it in the picture but the right hand wall was brown from 20 years of the dogs turning around and sleeping under the desk, so I scrubbed it pretty good but I'm just going to paint over it.
We did remember why the floors were weird and they had a weird plastic rug thing that was in the middle of the rooms on this side of the house, so they finished all the edges of the room and slapped the plastic stuff down in the middle and when we moved in, my parents got that all up. So I need to do something to the floor, but honestly, it's not that urgent in my mind. I'll brainstorm on it. The whole thing really needs a sanding and probably some kind of finish but I haven't decided what yet.
I love the room though, it gets a ton of natural light from the front window, it's nice.
to do: tape everything up for painting, remove carpet tacks, one more thorough vacuuming. Hopefully I'll be painting tonight during crafting. I picked out a nice light blue/purple color that I think will look nice. It is lighter in the paint can than pictured here so we'll see what happens. Once I get the far left corner painted and the floor done in that area, we'll move the big shelf over and get the carpet up/clean/paint etc in that corner. The big shelves are solid wood, so heavy and only have two inches of clearance with the ceiling, so hard to move around.
My dad spent some time looking at the upstairs bathroom and figuring out where he left off of that project, so we will work on that in the next week or so. He is almost finished with the rental renovations, lots of small things to finish up, so that frees me up for other projects like this. Also everything got staticky all at once this weekend, so I grabbed the little stone kettle from the basement and set that up on the wood stove to help humidify the house.
So Saturday, I split wood. I had to chainsaw a lot of the logs as I went since the bobcat can only pick up 16 foot lengths and the logs we had delivered were 32. That warmed me up nicely for sure. Nothing wanted to start and run well since it was so chilly first thing in the morning. Once I did that, I started with our outdoor burner wood, I split big logs into big chunks in the back of the dump trailer. This is probably two weeks of wood. We split this pretty much as big as we can lift, although I like a eight inch diameter log to be split in half for ease of throwing into the burner. Once it gets heavier, it is hard to throw it to the back of the burner.
Then I split three bags of wood for maple syrup production. Ideally this is split to be wrist size because it will burn hotter. We have a six way split on the wood processor which does an okay job, but a lot of the splits fall away from the bulk bags, so it's more getting out of the skidsteer and throwing them into the bags which isn't a bad thing to help keep warmer. The four way splitter is better because I can pop it up and down against the ground and release the stuck logs that way and they usually get into the bags. I'll have to explain the setup for the bags at some point because it's a great set up for getting firewood into a forkable format with the tools we have. We need around 10 cords of wood for syrup production, and each bag holds approximately 0.4 cords, so we need 25 bags. Right now, we've got seven drying in storage, and as long as I keep up my wood production of 3-4 bags every week or so, we'll be good to go for February. We also don't have that many bags (I think we have 12?), we'd have to pick up more but my parents have never managed to work this far ahead on splitting either, so we're doing good. We have a used airline baggage cart that we can load by hand with more wood and another wood tote plus we can probably find more used bags somewhere too.
The wood processor for the skidsteer is a phenomenal piece of equipment that is incredible to use. Really splits fast. Not great at anything that isn't a straight piece of wood with no splits but we can get those pretty easy. It's best feature is that we can lift it up and split into things, so I lifted it high enough that I split directly into the trailer.
I also split for our indoor wood stove which have to be a certain length that is shorter than the logs for the other two uses and can be larger than the maple logs but not too much larger. These I loaded into one of our wood totes which is one of those plastic tote/metal cube situations that I cut two sides out and the plastic in half to make a roof. I can't load it super full since the tractor we have the forks on can't pick it up super full, but that will be two weeks or so of indoor wood. It's still decently wet from being outside, but the wind should help dry it out now that it's covered. It burns terribly. But that's to be expected, we need to work ahead more for this wood. And I will! Next splitting day, I'll probably do another tote and get it drying ahead before we need it.
Wood specs:
- outdoor burner wood: can be longer, almost the length of the splitting slot, 24-26 inches long, two way if 8-10 inch diameter, 4 way split if larger, can be rounds from the ends that are weird sizes
- indoor stove wood or campfire wood (we need 4-5 cords for the fall group outings)- ideal length is from my elbow to fingertip, slightly shorter than the marking on the wood processor, four way split if 8-10 inches, six way if larger but some might still be too large, so those can go to outdoor burner
- maple production wood - ideal length is the marking on the wood processor that my dad put there, probably 20-24 inches or so, split with the six way unless very small logs, then use 4 way, ideally width of the wrist. there is some variability and my dad will split the larger pieces with the hydraulic tractor mounted splitter in between log feeds to the syrup evaporator for hottest burn
Yesterday I spent the morning forking the wood into storage and finished up splitting the tote since I didn't quite have enough. We had gotten an inch or so of snow overnight but no one was really expecting it, so the plows didn't get out until later in the morning. It was bitter cold and even bundled up with a scarf, my whole face was freezing pretty quickly. I got warmed up and hit the road for the local spinner's guild, la dee da. Five minutes away from the location, I wondered if they had cancelled and lo and behold, they had. To be fair, they had posted and emailed about it earlier in the day but I didn't think to check since it was only an inch of snow and the plows would have taken care of it by 1pm. But they had to make the call, so I wasn't that bothered. I stopped by the hardware store and got paint and painting supplies and headed home. I was a little sad about not having it, I was looking forward to it. But these things happen.
I came home and looked at the old office/new crafting room.
This is before, the walls are peachy tan and dirty as all get out, the carpet is tan and dingy. I got my plan figured out and spent the evening working on it, removed all the stuff in the way (misc items, nails, faceplates), washed the walls and scraped tape, patched the holes, and pulled up the carpet and under carpet. The dust under the carpet was incredible. I had to bang the filter on the shop vac clean twice to get it all up. But, now look at it! You can't see it in the picture but the right hand wall was brown from 20 years of the dogs turning around and sleeping under the desk, so I scrubbed it pretty good but I'm just going to paint over it.
We did remember why the floors were weird and they had a weird plastic rug thing that was in the middle of the rooms on this side of the house, so they finished all the edges of the room and slapped the plastic stuff down in the middle and when we moved in, my parents got that all up. So I need to do something to the floor, but honestly, it's not that urgent in my mind. I'll brainstorm on it. The whole thing really needs a sanding and probably some kind of finish but I haven't decided what yet.
I love the room though, it gets a ton of natural light from the front window, it's nice.
to do: tape everything up for painting, remove carpet tacks, one more thorough vacuuming. Hopefully I'll be painting tonight during crafting. I picked out a nice light blue/purple color that I think will look nice. It is lighter in the paint can than pictured here so we'll see what happens. Once I get the far left corner painted and the floor done in that area, we'll move the big shelf over and get the carpet up/clean/paint etc in that corner. The big shelves are solid wood, so heavy and only have two inches of clearance with the ceiling, so hard to move around.
My dad spent some time looking at the upstairs bathroom and figuring out where he left off of that project, so we will work on that in the next week or so. He is almost finished with the rental renovations, lots of small things to finish up, so that frees me up for other projects like this. Also everything got staticky all at once this weekend, so I grabbed the little stone kettle from the basement and set that up on the wood stove to help humidify the house.
no subject
Date: 2025-12-15 03:53 pm (UTC)Hurrah for progress!
(that's a lot of progress.)