The Carpenter the Door and the Window

In our basement directly underneath our front porch, is a door-less little cement walled room; a room which we have affectionately dubbed our cellar.  Housed in the little cellar are all our canned goods seated on wooden shelves which line the room.  Everything was nice and cozy... Until we found ourselves the possessors of bushels of apples (leftovers after cider and applesauce making), apples that needed a place to stay.  While there was space in the cellar, it wasn't cold enough to keep the apples.

One suggestion was to put a door in the cellar opening, thus shutting off any warm air coming from the rest of the house. 

So we bought and old wooden door, and Josiah and Dad set to work making a frame for it in the cellar opening.

Then Josiah began the process of shaving down the door to fit.

 

 

After many hours of labor the door was properly fit and hung, and we finally had a door to our cellar!!

Now to make sure that the door had succeeded in making the room cold enough we stuck a thermometer among all our colorful jars of produce, and left it there for several hours.

Upon returning, we found that while the door had made the cellar cooler, alas it had not made it cold enough!  So we went on to plan B.

Petitioning the help of Mr. Reiche we took on the project of putting a window into the cellar.  First we had to remove one cement block (without damaging the others) which was accomplished by chisels and hammers.

We then fit in the tiny window that Faith had bought this summer that just happened to be the exact size of a cement block.

Now the cellar is freezing (o.k. 42º) cold, not very pleasant for humans, but perfect for apples and vegetables!

~Chs