In the last six months or so, Westacre has produced rather a lot of wood. As we will be partially warming our house from a wood burning stove before long, we need to keep hold of it. So we’ve had to be creative about finding places to store it.

It all started when the old wooden windows were taken out in November. There’s nothing much you can do with used window frames, except chop it into wood burner sized pieces. So that’s what Alex did. He stacked it all in the wood store behind the garage, along with the split bits of oak that we inherited from his dad.

In the stormy weather of February, part of the huge leylandii in the back of the garden came down and landed on the roof of the shed. As we couldn’t leave the three sizeable branches up there, we had to do some rope and pulley work to both get them off and make sure they didn’t fall in an uncontrolled manner. We certainly didn’t want them landing on our heads.

Once they were safely down and detached from the tree, Alex th

Old floor boards stacked by the fire place, ready for burning.

en started processing the branches into usable firewood. He had to make a new saw horse, a sturdy one that he could use with the circle saw without sawing through it. A few happy days were spent cutting and splitting the resinous wood.

But then where to put it? It’s green wood, so it really needs seasoning in an airy space. The wood shed was already quite crowded. We considered structures and places in the garden to put this new wood store, but didn’t really come to a conclusion.

The next job in the renovation project was to take up the suspended wooden floors downstairs in the old part of the house. There isn’t much you can do with old floor boards either. So we had another marathon process of sawing them into wood burner sized pieces. Most of those are now stacked in our living room, right next to the fire place, with room for more.

The leylandii logs seasoning in the new wood store – what you can do with a dog house and floor boards.

We also had an old dog house by the back door. It was taking up a lot of space, and we don’t own a dog. Alex had the luminous idea of using its roof and its floor to make an outdoor wood store.

In about half a day, he produced a tall contraption, with floor joists at the corners and floor boards as the open walls. He and his dad manhandled it into one of the flower beds close to the house, and Hilde stacked it with the logs from the fallen Leylandii.

We’re quite proud. It looks smart, and it keeps the rain out. The wood should be able to season quite effectively in there. And it’ll smell lovely on a fire.