Upgrades coming to the Woman Cave

The Woman Cave experienced major trauma this past spring. Raccoons did a thorough number on trashing it, including chewing holes in the ceiling and turning my desk into a latrine. The Woman Cave wasn't much to brag about before the 'coons decided to mess with it; after cleaning out the crap it was clear we needed to do some serious DIY soon. Soon, of course, has always been a relative term with us. We know we have to take the damaged ceiling panels down but it didn't get done in the summer, and once cold weather arrived we decided to wait a bit. (I got lucky with the desk. The furry bastards dumped a bunch of books on it before starting to build a mountain of feces. It was disgusting, I wound up tossing about $300 worth of books, but the desk wasn't damaged. My dad made it so it has sentimental value.)(I also got lucky with my sewing and craft supplies. Trash pandas might be smart but they didn't open any drawers and apparently couldn't figure out how to open latched Sterlite totes.) 

We should probably invest in some throwaway coveralls and some N-95 masks before we start the ceiling removal part of the project. You know that when the ceiling paneling comes down it'll be accompanied by over 40 years of rodent droppings and squirrel souvenirs. I figure the squirrels in the ceiling were the original reason for the raccoons getting up there from the outside: those little red pine squirrels would be an attractive late winter snack to a trash panda. Then once the raccoons were in the ceiling, they decided to see what might be hiding beneath it. 

Anyway, we decided that as long as we're taking down a good section of the ceiling, we'll redo the insulation up there and maybe put in a new lighting fixture, something more recessed than what's there now. And if we're going to insulate part of the ceiling, we really should finish off the wall behind the stove, the one we've been meaning to finish for the past 40+ years but let slide because the wood stove was in the way. That gray stuff is a sheet of asbestos that broke into multiple pieces back in about 1976 and has been leaning there ever since. It's long past time to do something about it. If we're going to finish the wall, including insulating it better, then we're going to have to move the stove. If we're going to deal with moving that beast, we might as consider replacing it entirely.  

Of course, we've been talking about doing something about the woodstove since the '90's. I have blogged in the past about the joys of using that stove, the one that inhales wood the same way winos suck down Gallo. It is a rather crude box stove made from plate steel. It was a used stove when we acquired it. I can't recall its history, but it's gone through a couple owners before us. We got it in the 1970s and it had flaws then. The door has never hung quite right so the draft is hard to control, and the grates got eaten through ages ago. It has a water tank on the side toward the wall, which would be a handy feature if it actually held water. 

It is, in brief, a homemade box stove that would give any fire insurance agent heart failure. It is also the stove that was our primary source of heat for The Shoebox when we lived in it during one of the coldest winters on record, but that adventure has been documented elsewhere. And, yes, that is a brick on the front door. It's the draft control. Doesn't work real well when there's a half inch gap at the top of the door, but it's the thought that counts. On the other hand, when I fired it up the other day it got the Woman Cave from right above zero degrees Fahrenheit to almost 80 in less than an hour. 

I'd been kind of watching for a decent woodstove of about the right size to show up on the local buy/sell/trade page (aka Baraga County Shit Stuff for Sale). Last week I spotted a contender. A seller listed a "vintage" parlor stove. A parlor stove! Nifty. It wouldn't be just a source for heat -- it would be a decorative feature. The Woman Cave would have "decor." The big questions were (a) just how big was it (the Woman Cave has limited space) and (b) how badly was it rusted?

Turned out the size is just about perfect. It does have flaws, of course. Some of the mica in the door, the see-through one that lets you admire the fire, is missing, but mica is cheap. One of the pins for a door (it has two; one on the front and one on an end) is gone, but that's also a simple fix. And, yes, it's looking rather rusty but the S.O. has a sand blaster. When warmer weather approaches, he'll clean it up, we'll get some black stove paint, and the Woman Cave will acquire vaguely more style. 

I had been a little worried about how the new stove would line up with the chimney, such as it is, but turns out the answer is No Problem. 

This is how the stove should look cleaned up, except we don't have the nifty decorative top.