Side Project: Firewood

Brad loves a fireplace, and prefers wood-burning to gas. Our house has that. The previous owners left a disheveled stack of wood which we haphazardly added to when we had a few trees taken down two years ago. The area was just a mess but didn’t seem to warrant my attention until this summer. Mainly, I needed that space to expand and grow my garden footprint.  

I spent an evening looking for ideas on Pinterest. Thank you to the people who post their projects on Pinterest! Usually, what seems easy is too good to be true. I landed on a basic idea that seemed like I could put it together by myself with relatively little effort. This is a good look at the example I was trying to copy:  

The requirements are pretty straight-forward: three cinder blocks, two landscape timbers and four pieces of 2”x4” lumber. I purchased the landscape timbers as-is – no cuts required. I purchased the 2”x4”s in a 10’ length, and had Home Depot cut them in half. I must admit, it was as easy as it seems. It only took me one weekend to realize that a second stack would be necessary.  

These are both on the south side of my property. That chain-link fence is the border between us and our neighbors. The stacks straddle an existing tree. They bump up next to our tornado shelter (remember, this is Oklahoma). There is a small path (maybe two and a half feet wide) between the stack and the fence, purposely left so that we can access the wood from either side. The ground cover that you see in summer will die-back over winter (which you can see in the before pictures). Its main purpose is to hide three sides of the storm shelter.  

I’m pleased with the results. Slowly, but surely, Cooper has been chopping the larger logs and I’ve been stacking the wood. We still have a handful of logs to address before this area is fully cleared and cleaned up.  And of course, as soon as we finish that – we will be ready to cut down a few more trees.

It is a never-ending list of projects here at Patch405.