It’s been three long days since I’ve gotten around to writing a short update.

They have been dominated by long days of work that culminated in completion of the last official wood-working project in preparation for winter. Two (rather large) open shelves with counter-tops are now assembled in the living room. The first one was assembled yesterday when the oil was almost completely dried on all its parts. The second took a short cut – it was assembled only half finished (oiled) and the remaining pieces (those I finished working on today) were oiled after assembly (this way they are drying in place instead of occupying a large space in the middle of the room – it should be dry by tomorrow.

Meanwhile Andreea has been mostly inside the house cleaning and organizing our stuff – all our clothes are in the new closet and tomorrow all the books and other stuff will go into the new shelves. Andreea also struggled with the old wood-stove. We haven’t used it in a few weeks (we spend all out times indoors in the bedroom) – so today she wanted to fire it up again – to get the room warm (helps the finish dry) and remove some of the moisture building up in it (moisture is a problem all year long and can cause much damage – so stoves need to be lit). Anyways, she lit up and again it began to smoke like crazy – it really bummed her out. I suggested she try using some heat-resistant silicon … and she worked on it for quite  a while and got it all sealed off … fired it up again and this time heat without smoke! A big relieft.

It’s really starting to come together and it looks like we’ll be able to bring our Christmas tree indoors into a pleasant and clean house.

I’ll be spending most of tomorrow replenishing our fire-wood supply and if there will be time for it I will try to finish a few finishing pieces I want to add to the living room shelves. There are still a few projects but they are on the nice to have list – this includes a low-table for the living room, dressers and a headboard for the bed, another small creative cabinet in the hall kitchen for shoes, garbage and coats 🙂 and on and on and on 🙂

In the background of these 3 days has been a violent disturbance from the life we left behind in Israel. It is being resolved and hopefully will soon fade away from our consciousness.