I can't brain today. I have the dumb. - unknown

I was up at 4 and had finished breakfast by 5:00. By 6:00 I had the critters fed and set for the day. Poor Sundae is so big she can barely get up off the ground, but she's also too big to stand for any length of time. Ten more days.
I found a dead mouse in the barn so I guess the cats are doing their job.

I let the two broody hens out of the broody cage and ushered them over to where the rest of the flock was grazing. The cage seems to have done the trick. I read that if a hen is still broody she'll go right back to the nest and neither of them did. They spent the day hunting with the rest of the chickens.

By 6:30 I was doing demo to get the stove out. It did not go quietly into that dark night! The first challenge was getting the stove pipe removed. They're supposed to have a slip piece, but not here! I had to cut out a slice about 4" thick so I could lift up on the bottom portion and pull down on the top. It was double wall pipe with some nasty insulation between the walls that went pretty much everywhere when I opened it up.

I have a Harbor Freight furniture dolly that I put up against the edge of the raised base and "walked" the stove onto that dolly and out of the way. Then I could go to work on the walls.
Ugh!
That was real brick, just about 1/2" thick and held to the original paneling with an adhesive with a grout between bricks. I could only come up with one way to get it off - beat on it with a pry bar. Keep beating. Beat some more. It came off in small pieces. Keep beating.

That base just sat on the floor so it just had to be picked up and removed.

MoHo's are supposed to be so air tight that a wood stove requires a source of "outside combustible air." Our MoHo leaks like a colander but it still had a hole in the floor that had a small sheet metal tube supplying air from underneath MoHo to the interior of the stove box. It seemed like a good idea to cover up that opening with a piece of drywall lest critters climb in during the night.

I'll re-insulate the exterior wall (facing you in this pic) and then drywall over it. Our new stove doesn't require a fireproof wall behind it.

The problem: the paneling to the left that goes the length of MoHo. I'd filled the grooves and painted it so the room didn't look so dark. Paneling is about 3/16" thick and the thinnest drywall I can get is 3/8" thick. That's a problem where they meet. The only solution is to remove another 12' of paneling down to where the hallway begins and there's a molding piece that will work as a seam.

If I'm going to take off all that paneling I may as well take out the single pane aluminum window and replace it with a double pane vinyl window that actually works. The window 50" wide and 36" tall (heavy).
So much fun!

Time for coffee, cookies, and BED.