Kitchen & cook stove

The kitchen is finished and this project went well.

Most of the logs in the wall of the kitchen are 15” wide so
the walls went up pretty fast. These logs came from Scott Stancell’s place in
Eastatoe.

The boards in the floor average 10” wide and came from my
Aunt Kathy and Uncle Larry Young’s land which was on my Grandma and Grandpa Whitmire’s
farm.  The kitchen cabinet was also built
from these boards.

I have a wood cook stove in the kitchen and I’m looking
forward to cooking meals on it.  I have
just completed the rock chimney and flue for it.  I sawed a hole in a log to install an 8”
thimble. After installing the stove pipe through it I began
building a chimney on the outside of the cabin, going around the thimble. I
checked the stove top and the oven out to see if it would draw and it worked
well. It took about 2 weeks in my spare time to complete the chimney. I also,
put a fire resistant panel on the inside of the cabin between the stove and the
log wall. It was finished on a Thursday.

The very next day, about 2 hours before my regular Friday
night picking session, I decided to test it again to make sure that it would
draw smoke like it was supposed to. I had checked the stove a few days earlier
to make sure it was safe to light. I put paper and kindling in the firebox and
lit it with a match. The stove started smoking and immediately filled the
kitchen with smoke. But, after a few seconds, it suddenly started drawing like
it was supposed to. Then I heard scratching inside the ash box. I thought maybe
a rat had gotten into the stove and built a nest, I assumed that it burned the
nest out of the pipe started drawing correctly. I left the stove alone and
decided I needed to clear the smoke out of the cabin and clean up before people
started arriving. The next day I went to the cabin, carefully opening the door
to look in the ash box.  I knew the mouse
would be dead but I was moving slowly and carefully just in case. I started removing
the ash pan very slowly. What I saw appeared at first to be a big rat in the
ashes but as I pulled the pan out a little further, I could see brown feathers
and knew it was a bird, my first thought then was that it was a hawk. I removed
the ash pan and took it outside to empty and that is when I could tell that it
was not a rat or hawk but a screech owl!! While I was building the chimney
around the thimble the owl must have seen the hole through the logs and
thinking it was a hollow tree, entered down the stove pipe into the firebox of
the stove and was unable to escape.  I
regret that it died this way. It had apparently been there only a couple of
days because I had checked out the top of the stove a few days earlier.  I shudder to think what would have happened
if it had come out while I was checking out the stove!  I’ve had several fires in the stove since,
seasoned some pans in the oven, and cooked on the top burners so I am sure that
the stove it now free of obstructions, safe and in fine working order.

--written by Joe Whitmire Dec 2010