Motley Cru would be so jealous...(or Smoking, but not in the Boys' room)

Howdy Y'all!

After many moons of trying to convince my darlin Bride that I needed a new offset smoker, she asked my why I didn't just build one. The truth is, I hadn't even thought about it until then. As you know by now, I've built much of the furniture in our house, yet never even considered building my own smokehouse.  I began searching the internet for ideas and plans when I came across SmokingMeatForums and it didn't take long for me to decide exactly what I wanted. I found a thread from one of the members there and  borrowed from his design (by borrowed I mean shamelessly copied. See the link for his build).

I began the build by laying out my first run of cinder blocks. Having never done any sort of masonry work, it was a little bit disconcerting at first, but after the first run I began to get more and more comfortable. 

After the third run, I used 4x4x8 blocks to cap off the fire box portion. I used 1/8th" angle iron to support the caps across the expanse, then mortar to seal the open spaces. 

I ordered a custom steel door from Wilke's Badass Pits in Conroe, TX for the fire box, and went pretty basic on it. The door measured 16"x16" to perfectly fit the opening, with a 1" trim that completely seals the firebox if needed.  

Two 8x8x8 block turned on their side to allow the smoke and heat to move from the fire box to the cook space. 

Once the mortar dried, I started framing the cook space with cedar 2x4's.

After a long day, the framing was complete...

The door is built with 1/8th" clearance all the way around, then trimmed to seal completely. No smoke leaks there! (You can see I have my little helper (the Piglet) out there with me...). 

This is a shot of the interior of the cook space. It measures 30"x 35"x 60" (24" of cinder block bottom, 36" cedar top). The black piece you see in the upper left corner is a 6" stovepipe purchased at Tractor Supply.

Interior view of the opening between the fire box and cook space. There is a 9" concrete block overhang between the opening and the cedar to reduce the chance of ash and to deflect some of the direct heat from the dried cedar. If you didn't know, dried cedar and flame will smoke...as it burns your smokehouse to the ground....

I put a 6" cast iron damper in the stovepipe to control my airflow on this end.

Here is the rest of the chimney..

After the build was complete, I burned oak in the firebox to help eliminate any remaining cedar scent inside the cook space. I let it set for a day after that, then smoked two spatchcocked chickens as a test run. Once I figured out the correct airflow, it maintained 200-225 degree temps with little fuss. 

Dinner in the making. The cooking grates were also custom manufactured at Wilkes Badass Pits for about $35 each. Much cheaper than building them myself, not to mention better constructed!

Finished smokehouse....Despite the fact it appears the Good Lord is giving it His blessing, I was working on our Thanksgiving bird when this pic was taken.

Since the build, I've smoked two turkeys, two hams, two racks of ribs, two briskets, and a whole mess of bacon wrapped stuffed jalapenos. Hindsight, with all this "two by two" stuff, maybe I should have dubbed this "Noah's Ark" instead of the "SmokeHahs"...




Until next time,

How to accidentally buy a house.

Well, once again, it has been a LONG time since I last posted here...as in one year, four months, and a handful of days. (Sorry, just really didn't feel like doing the math).  A lot has happened in that 16 month span, and I shall valiantly attempt to take you on a whirlwind tour of that era. As the title not-so-subtly suggests, we have moved the Coop since the last post. We left our little half acre in Montgomery, TX, and moved to a nice 4 acre place in the country about 24 miles away. As the title also suggests, we weren't dissatisfied with the old Coop, nor were we necessarily looking to move, thus leading us down the twisted path of  drama, the tale of our accidental sale/purchase of houses.

As my Darlin Bride will tell you, I rather enjoy browsing the electronic marketplace of the internet. Mostly just dreaming of what wondrous toys one could possess should one be so lucky as to win the lottery, if one played said lottery. I also had a habit of looking ahead to the future to see which amazing expanse of Texas we would purchase to raise the kids on, should the lottery-in-lieu-of -retirement plan work out. Needless to say, the Texas Lottery Commission had nothing to worry about from me as we never won more than $5 on a ticket. I did, however, stumble across this amazing property on 11 acres in our county that had a perfect barn with horse stalls, two smaller out buildings, and a house with enough bedrooms for all of us. The price was right and the place was perfect...or so we thought. My Bride scheduled a showing with the realtor and we toured the property, falling instantly  in love with the rolling hills, the stock tank full of flowering water lillies, and the ice-cold creek that slowly snaked through the back acre. The Realtor, Ms Joan Martin, led us to the house and up the stairs to a very large, nicely appointed deck and opened the door to our future county paradise. It was then that I saw our dream burst like a hairspray can in a bonfire. At first I thought I had knocked over an ashtray on the deck, but quickly realized that it was actually the atmosphere inside the house. The sellers apparently mistook the house for a BBQ pit and consistently used Benson and Hedges flavored firewood  because the odor of cigarette smoke charged out of the open door like an angry Hereford bull and smacked us around for a bit. Once I recovered from my coughing fit and cleared the tears from my eyes, we toured the house and decided that it was not for us, as we prefer our houses smoked with mesquite, or at least pecan. As we were preparing to leave, Ms Joan asked us if we were interested in selling our house. We hemmed and hawed, she said the magic word....FREE. Ms Joan told us that she and her husband, Mr. Richard, would be happy to come by the Coop and let us know the possible sale price of the place, at which point we could decide to sell it, or  stay there till the layers had grandchicks.

To shorten this tale of two cities by a paragraph or two, we did decide to sell the Coop and buy a new one simultaneously. This, for the uninitiated, is about as much fun than a two mile run through a briar patch wearing sandpaper shorts and concrete shoes.Without Ms Joan and Mr Richard, we would to this day still be sitting the corner of  our recently built barn sucking our thumbs while rocking back and forth singing "Tiptoe through the Tulips" like Tiny Tim. They were great. We managed to close on both houses the same day, and moved into the new and improved Coop.


Typical of my Darlin Bride and I, we began making what we considered improvements right off the bat. One nice feature of the new place is it had a saltwater cement pond (That's a pool to you non-Clampett types). The only problem with the pool was there was no safety fence around it, and seeing as we have the Monkey and the Piglet running around, and they weren't born with gills, we had a pool safety fence with a locking gate installed.

Before Fence...

After fence....

Once we secured the cement pond, it was time to tackle the interior of the house. Now I'm not one to disparage another's taste, but that kindness only applies to things they own. Now that it's ours, we made a couple of  mild, nearly unnoticeable changes to the color scheme. For instance, the lime green and bright blue master bath is now a nice neutral brown like the rest of the house, and the kids neon green bath is a soothing light blue with wood accents.

Kids bath after...

Kids bath before....

Just this past week we hired a local company known as 360 Painting to do the exterior of the house. Wesley Werner and his crew did a fantastic job of painting and trimming the exterior, never missing a spot, and were consummate professionals in every aspect.

Before 360 Painting company stepped in.....

After Wesley's crew finished...

My Beautiful Bride and I are very happy with the new Coop, and are overwhelming grateful to God for his grace and blessings. This is literally the place we've dreamed of having, and we feel so undeserving, but thankful. And just to end on a bandwidth gorging stack of photographs, I'll share a couple of my favorite moments from this adventure....

Happy Daddy

Happy lil Cowboy

Most importantly...Happy Momma!

Until next time,