All I Want for Christmas is to be Warm

Although it is warm and sunny here today, temperatures are supposed to plummet into the teens and single digits this weekend. Winter doesn't even begin until Monday and I am already tired of it.

We finally have the brick wall up in the family room and we finally have the free-standing stove in! I really am pleased with how it looks. I think it looks even better than before. Now it looks like a chimney. We can't wait to warm up to the heat of that stove. I think it will make a huge diffrence in heating our home. With the two stoves going, we can pretty much heat the rooms we use downstairs without the "help" of the gas company. We can cut the thermostat down some more and put a space heater upstairs just in case the boys get cold up there. Fortunately, with very few windows up there, it stays pretty toasty.

We met with our contractor last night and he getting close to being ready to tackle the mudroom and the log room. He has some great ideas for redoing the mudroom roof. It should look really good. Of course, at this point anything would look better than the big blue tarp!

We are making progress

The chimney repairs are almost finished. We can now use the fireplace in the log cabin room. Of course, we have been using the wood stove in the living room for quite awhile. They fixed that chimney first since it sustained the least damage. Now we are waiting to have the brick replaced in the family room so we can put in the free standing stove. The chimney is done, but when they were building it, they knocked down the interior brick wall where the pipe came in. So they have to rebuild it. Hopefully we'll have that done soon.

As for the rest of house, we met with the contractor and discussed a timeline for getting the roof work done. He can't get to us until January, but he is going to do some more tarping to get us by until then. He seems really enthusiastic about working on our house because it is so old. I am anxious to get it all done, but I am so used to waiting that it really doesn't bother me that it won't be done soon.