Maple Sugaring Day 3-4, Plus Basement Remodel Update

We romanticized the idea of sugaring, assuming it must be done on a wood burning stove off in some rustic locale, but it turns out our electric stove in the house gets much hotter and moves the boiling down process along about twice as fast as the wood burning stove in the barn. In the barn we had to stoke the stove with wood about every 10 minutes to keep it hot enough for even just a hint of boil, but on the electric stove we've got a rolling boil with the flip of a switch. Maybe it's a cop out, but we're going with what works on this maiden sugaring voyage.

While the sap boils, we're back at work in the basement, now working on the bedroom that adjoins the office/den area. The two rooms were originally separate, so we opened up the wall between them to make the space feel brighter and more open.

↓ The wall before, originally a weird, open closet

↓ The wall coming down

↓ What it looks like today, as photographed from the bedroom. The open doorway is waiting for French doors to be installed. In the bedroom we will paint the walls, closet doors and frame shown on the left, and install a wood beam ceiling.

↓ The original ceiling in the bedroom was a drop down (who puts a drop down ceiling in a bedroom?!), so we removed the panels and wire support frame this week. I was not sorry to see those panels (stacked below) go!

↓ And today, while the sap boils upstairs, we are adding furrings (those 2x4s drilled into the wood beam ceiling pictured below) in the bedroom in preparation for installing the v-groove wood plank ceiling. We are shooting to have the ceiling installed and walls/trim painted before the floor guy comes March 11, but seeing as though the planks have not yet arrived and still need to be stained and sealed before going up, that part may happen later.

That's all for today! Hopefully I will be sharing the good news that we've produced a gallon of delicious syrup soon :)

P.S. I just realized there is a human spine in the above picture, which is somewhat creepy without any explanation. Josh is a chiropractor. It's not a real spine, just a plastic model for explaining anatomy to patients --- I swear!