It's a Dirty Job, and We Have To Do It

The very day A. was due home from New York, I had a terrible time keeping the fire going. After all my boasting about my careful fire care during his absence, I figured I had jinxed myself. But then I realized that the handle attached to the damper inside the stove pipe seemed to have come loose and was no longer turning the damper to open it. Which meant that the fire wasn't getting enough draft to burn well.

A. confirmed this when he got home and said there was nothing to be done but let the fire go out and take the pipe apart in the morning to get at the damper.

When we got home from church, he said, "Okay, I'll fix the stove now. It shouldn't take too long."

Those, my friends, are the very definition of famous last words.

He took apart the stove pipe. This is when he saw that there was a rather dangerous build-up of creosote inside the stove pipe. So we had to get that cleaned out lest it cause a chimney fire and burn the house down.

Not exaggeration.

However, we don't have the proper tools to clean the pipe. A bunch of old rags attached to a long, stiff wire did the trick, along with A. basically sticking his entire arm up the stove pipe. Luckily, our house is only one story, so the stove pipe isn't that long and this cleaned out the majority of it.

Now here is where I tell you my main objection to wood heat: It is filthy. Hauling in wood means dirt and bits of bark all over. Loading the stove means smoke and ash sometimes come out. Cleaning out the stove means ash gets everywhere. But the filthiest of all is cleaning out the stove pipe.

This is not what you want to see in your kitchen.

In addition to all the creosote that came out of the pipe and (more or less) into that pan there, the actual pieces of stove pipe that A. took apart fell to the floor and scattered creosote across a large part of the kitchen floor under the table.

I knew we had to do this, but to say I was displeased about the mess was a vast understatement.

A. bore the brunt of the filth in the cleaning of the stove pipe:

Look at that chipper chimney sweep.

But I was tasked with the clean-up of the actual house when the stove had been re-assembled. 

Thanks to Bugs Bunny (for the boys) and a nap (for Poppy), the children at least were out of the way during the part where the stove was in pieces and piles of creosote were all over the kitchen. But just as A. finished up and I was starting to sweep and mop the horrid mess off the floor, the cartoon ended and Poppy woke up.

The boys were whining in the doorway that they wanted lunch, Poppy was crying in her crib, and I was faced with the reality that a mop does very little to actually clean a large quantity of creosote off the floor.

I sort of got the floor cleaned--leaving Poppy to cry in her crib for a few minutes and ignoring the whining for food--but for the rest of the day everyone was going around with gray socks. 

After the kids were all in bed, I got down on my hands and knees with many wet rags and got the floor really clean. Hands and knees was the only way to do it. The mop was just pushing dirty water around, because it got dirty immediately, as did the water in the bucket the first time I dunked the mop in there.

This morning I spent some time with another rag cleaning window sills, cabinets, the top of the microwave . . . basically every flat surface in the kitchen that had collected a layer of fine creosote.

But now the kitchen is finally clean again, and the woodstove won't burn the house down. Hooray.