Kippered

Early this afternoon I went up to my cottage to scrub the walls, now that the weather is decent.

Maybe I should start farther back, and explain why I have to scrub the walls. Okay, it began last summer - no, it began in 2006. That's the year I bought the cottage, when the Jamaica Cottage Shop was having a moving sale here in Rawsonville. They were moving to the old Smith's Mill location, a couple miles away, and had to get rid of every cottage and shed on their Rawsonville lot, and were offering the 16x20 Cottage for a hair under $7Gs, fully assembled, and delivered. So I got there and was 18th in line, but managed to get the cottage. Woohoo! Later that summer it was delivered, and I thought - my own studio! At last!


But years went by, as my plans for insulating, wiring and finishing it were back-burnered again and again. Finally, in 2008, I hired a carpenter to fix it up the roof - put down plywood and felt paper under the metal roof so I could insulate it. Late in October, he came and had a look, told me what he needed, and I ordered the stuff from a nearby lumberyard, and the carpenter said he'd come do the work the next time we had a couple sunny days, and could take the roof off.

The next couple of sunny days, as it turns out, were in May of 2009. He fixed up the roof very nicely, and in one day, and charged a fair price. Then I thought, why not just have him do the rest? I'll never get to it myself... so I called him in July and had him come take a look, and I explained what I wanted - finished interior, insulated, wired for electricity, and my woodstove installed. he said he could do that - it'd take him about a week and a half, and he could do it after the middle of August. I said, Cool! As long as it's done by winter, and we shook on it.

Late in August he came by, worked for one day but then said that I had to clear out all the stuff that was in there before he could work He could not work around it. So in one frantic afternoon, Mary, Ken, Dad and I emptied the cottage, putting some stuff in the chicken house, some in the garage, and most of it in the storage locker where my woodstove had been languishing, at $40/month, since 2005. I called the carpenter that evening and told him it was all set.

But he did not show up again for more than 3 weeks. Said he had some urgent work, and he'd be here as soon as he could be. I thought, Okay, I'm small potatoes, and my job isn't urgent. Still lots of time before winter.

He came in September and worked a couple of days, putting up nailers and stuffing in insulation. He called me at work one day and said he knew how to save me a bunch of money - use the boards in the lumber piles up on the hill for paneling. I said okay, that'd be all right. I envisioned the paneling in the living room here, and the wall that Dad and I assembled by the front door: smooth boards, planed and sanded, notched together with splines tucked into grooved rabbeted out in the edges. Not bad.

The carpenter did panel the walls, but he used lumber that had been in the open, exposed to elements and dirt and so on. He did not plane them, sand them, rabbet them, or even rip the edges for a neat fit. He didn't even brush off the dirt and pine needles - just slapped them up and banged them into place with his power nailer. The boards do not fit together, and in some cases there is a 1/2" gap, leaving the plastic and insulation behind clearly visible. I did not notice this aesthetic nightmare until it was too late.

When I pointed out to him that this wasn't great, he said, "I thought you wanted it rustic." Rustic is okay, I thought, but I didn't want crappy.

I sighed, and let it go, but insisted that the rest of the boards be placed as snug together as possible. This he did, but used some beautiful thick planks that Dad had been saving for a bookcase. But we had not mentioned this to the carpenter, and he didn't ask, so the good bookcase boards now line my walls. They do look nice, but I feel as if I stole them from Dad.

The carpenter did put up a nice-looking ceiling, plywood with splines over the joints, looking kind of like a coffered ceiling. It'll look pretty good once painted.

He disappeared again for almost all of October, and most of November. I was getting a little ticked at this point - what happened to that "week an a half" in late August? A week before Thanksgiving I called and told him I was getting upset, I'd expected that it would be done by now, and if he didn't want to do the work, let me know so I could find someone who would do the job.

He called, all apologetic, saying "I didn't know you wanted it so soon," and said he only had a few hours left to do and he'd get it done by T'giving. (This was the Friday before.) I reminded him that I wanted it done before winter, and here it was, late November. He looked surprised. "I thought you meant, before it snowed."

Anyway, he worked a couple of days, and of course did not get it done before T'giving. It wasn't done by Christmas, either. Finally, in the first week of January, he installed the stove and (very very expensive) chimney pipe, and said it was all set to move in. I paid him off and said Thanks, and went to have a look.

The walls and ceiling are insulated, and paneled. There are electrical outlets all over the place - probably too many for a tiny cabin, but that's okay. The stove was in on a tiled hearth, piped through the back wall.

But a few of the outlets lack cover plates; the paneling is uneven, even the stuff put up with a semblance of care. Wires stick through the ceiling, waiting for a fan, and through the outside wall, waiting for an exterior outlet. Scraps and trash were piled deep on the porch.

But it's my Cottage, my studio-to-be, my escape. I will have a bed in the loft, and a porch rail upon which to prop my feet and watch a June moonrise. I will have room to spread out my artwork, my writing, my ideas and work. A place to be away from the TVs, phone, noise, distraction.

Winter, however, had set in, and snow piled deep around the building. I have no firewood (major lack of foresight on my part), and so could not move in over the winter. It's been a long couple of months, biding my time, waiting out another snowy dark January and February.

So today, the first warm sunny day of spring, I went up to the cottage with a pan and some water, a new scrub brush, gloves and cleanser. I lit a fire in the stove, intending to burn some of the scrap lumber, and set about mixing the cleanser with which to scrub the dirty wood. Making lemonade from lemons, as it were.

But I noticed that the stove was smoking. At first I thought it was just a cold chimney, but the smoke got thicker and thicker, though I knew that the drafts were working. Smoke poured from every seam in the stove and stovepipe and filled the cottage with a gray cloud. I went outside to see if any smoke was coming from the chimney, and - horrors! The chimney had fallen off!

After a moment of panic, envisioning my cottage burning to the ground, I sprinted to the house for a pair of tongs - slipping and sliding in the slick layer of soupy mud in the driveway. I burst into the house, exclaiming, "My chimney fell off! I have a fire in there!" I grabbed tongs from the fireplace and ran back up on the hill (not fast; I sprained an ankle 10 days ago and am wearing a brace), and threw flaming chunks of wood out into the yard, then grabbed the water I had intended for scrubbing, and dumped a quart or so into the smoldering remains of the fire. A huge cloud of smoke billowed up, adding to the already choking cloud in the room that kept driving me out into the air, coughing, eyes streaming and burning. With the fire out, I went back to the house, more circumspectly this time, and called the carpenter, leaving a stern message about the chimney, and telling him to call me.

I returned to the cottage to dump the water out of the ash pan and take out the sodden dead coals. I took out 2 of the storm windows and let the air blow through, and propped the door open.

I looked at the chimney, and could see that the huge snowstorm we had on 2/24 had been the villain. The snow had piled up and then slid off the roof, knocking the chimney clean out of the thimble (the bit that runs through the wall), buckling a support strut and snapping one of the roof braces, causing the whole chimney stack to swing around sideways, dangling from the remaining roof brace.

The carpenter called and said he'll be by tomorrow to have a look. I know that the snow is what caused the chimney to come apart, but I think if the thing had been assembled properly, it would not have fallen off to begin with.

Anyway - no damage was done, except to my nerves. My throat is still sore, now 4 hours after the incident, and though I showered, my hair still smells smoky. I was able to joke about it with my brother, saying that I could have hung hams to smoke pretty well in the cottage today... but I'm not really feeling very jovial. I am glad that I didn't light the stove and go back to the house for a few minutes. what if the chimney had heated up and set fire to the wall, and the roof? This cottage on which I have spent probably too much money, and for which I have waited so long, might have been destroyed within minutes.

I left it wide open all afternoon, letting the mild breeze clear out the smoke. There was nothing inside that could be damaged by smoke - no fabric or porous material, so that's one good thing. The mud and ash will wash off the floor, and the chimney can be reassembled.

There was one sad thing: While I was cleaning out the stove, I turned the tumblers in the bottom of the firebox - tho movable toothed rods that serve as the grate. They stuck, and I gave a hard push on the handle, and one of the tumblers broke clean in two, and fell out. So now I can't have a fire, even when the chimney gets put up again. I think the stove can be repaired - I hope it can.

March is often a cruel month - much crueler than April, despite what the poets may say. I hope that this is as bad as it gets. Knock on wood.