How often do you WASH it out? Some people who complain about garbage can odor never wash the dern thing. Try Grandma's old trick of wrapping stinky things in newpaper. The newpaper seems to absorb odors. It really seems to work. If you don't subscribe to one ask for "paper" at the grocery store and use those brown paper bags. Newspaper seems to work better for some reason though. Use metal cans instead of plastic ones. Plastic is porous and seems to absorb odor and not release it, even after washing. Keep a spray bottle of bleach or all purpose antibacterial cleanser mixed 1:3 with water and just spray the inside when it seems to be getting smelly and pick up day is still a few days away. Keeping the lid snapped on airtight is going to make the problem worse with no air circulation. If you keep it in the garage you probably do not have a problem with critters and a flip lid is probably adequate. Consider composting, and get a Green Cone. Plenty of info on this, on the garden side of this board.

Your woodstove is much newer than 1977, probably at least 7-12 years newer. (I'm irresistably tempted to gently tease you about your sense of "stepping back into a time warp" - you're here on the Old House Forum so a house built in 1977 is barely out of warranty by our standards. My own house was built many years before 1877.) I think we bought our stove in the first year the model was available and I suspect that was 1983 or possibly as late as 1985. We have another similar, but slightly newer, model with putty-colored enamel (which hasn't stood the test of hard use nearly as well as the black, unenameled orginal one). We burned the putty coloreed one for a few years but went back to the black one. It has been completely rebuilt a few times in the last 30 years! The catalytic converter ought to be replaced very few years (ours are done after about 2.5 burning seasons, but we put a lot of wood through it.) If you believe it has never been done, then I would plan on buying a new one, though keeping the old one on hand in case you have a problem with the new one sometime and want to stick something in to tide you over. Store the old very carefully as they extremely delicate. Don't do as I did once, vacuum the fly ash off, and sucked the whole thing into the vac: a $250 oops! Nowadays the cats are made in China with very mixed quality control. The cat part itself will cost $250-$350, exclusive of labor to install. We replace ours by ourselves. Does your stove have a heat shield on the back - a metal panel that stands off the main body of the stove about 1.5"? Since it's backed by a masonry wall, it may not be necessary. At any rate if had one, you'd have to take it off, and then remove the panel in the upper back to expose the cat chamber if your stove is an older model; slightly newer ones are accessed in a different way. You can find your model number on a plate on the back of the stove near the bottom (on right, I think). It's important info to know because there were slight changes to the model over time. The operating instructions are still online, I believe.(VermontCastings.com) The company has had a somewhat checkered ownership history with some periods producing less desirable work. Your stove definitely is a catalytic model because I can see the handle on the left of the stove which is what you use to change the exhaust pathway from a direct exhaust to going through the catalytic pathway after the stove has come to proper temp for lighting-off the secondary fire in the cat. If you haven't used it yet I would suggest a thorough looking-over by a competent sweep, preferably one used to or selling Vermont Castings stoves. Replace cat as recommended. Also have him look at all the weatherstripping around the doors (front, ash pan access and top load). These parts get worn out over time, and are easily replaceable. Also, be sure to double-check before burning that there is an ashpan under the stove(not just an empty slot where it lives). Open the ash door at the bottom right (having slid sheets of newsprint under the stove and floor in front of the hearth in case it is over-filled and will dump ashes around). There should be a shallow trapezoidal pan riding in the framework attached to the back of the ash door that can be lifted out and dumped when full. There is a removeable (perhaps lost) black metal cover that slides on the pan to contain the ashes and hot coals for transport to the dumping site; it's not strictly necessary, but nice. (Again a set of high-temp fire fighters' gloves - blue Fire-Dex - will help you here.) Now, just in case you are not experienced wood burners, I need to emphasize this CRITICAL point. Do not dump the ashes in anything except a metal, closeable trash can that is set outside, away from the house, preferably on a stone slab, but at least never within any structure nor on a wooden-floored porch. The reason is that even seemingly cold ashes can re-ignite and start a house fire. (Though if you've never burned the stove and the house has been empty for years the first dump is probably cold, but never assume that again unless it's been all summer without a fire.) This is a very important thing that people are occasionally careless about, with tragic consequences. I don't know if you recall the awful news reports a couple of years ago of a whole family, with many children, in an newly reno'd old house in CT that lost their lives because of a fire started by improperly disposed-of ashes and coals. Even though we dump our ashes and coals in a closed can, outside, I have more than once gone back a few days later to dump the next batch and found glowing embers still in the coals after days of being shut up. So, first make sure you have that ash pan installed and cleaned out before burning. And try to find the black cover that slides over it for carrying out to disposal area. The air that feeds the fire flows up through the ash bed, so if the under-stove pan is stuffed and there are too many ashes in the firebox, you will have a dickens of a time getting things going properly. You can find a good magnetic w/s thermometer at any store that sells w/s accessories. Expect to pay $10-15. If you can find one with a little half-round wire handle, buy it. I think they are better as they can be more easily moved. But if you can't, buy another kind since you can't operate the stove without one. The reason for that is that after you light the stove, let the fire build and settle down, and then based on temps measured at the center of the griddle on top, turn the left hand lever completely backwards (it will go past a slight resistance with a firm "snap" when it is properly positioned) to close the internal smoke door and force the exhaust pathway through the cat. You will hear a change in the sound of the stove, and you should see a fairly prompt rise (over minutes, not seconds) of temps on the top surface of the stove. This is the heat created by burning off the gases and particulates in the smoke, which is what the cat is doing - wringing the most amount of heat out of the fuel and at the same time cleaning up more of the residual particulates that are generated in a wood fire. This explanation is sort of coming in at the middle of an intial firing sequence, as a I don't know how experienced you are. I could start at the very beginning and go through it step by step, if that would help you. One other thing to verify (either by you or your sweep): is your stove connected to a dedicated outside combustion air feed? This will be a visible pipe (though it can be suqare or rectangular) that comes up and attaches to the lower back of the stove. It will the only thing back there, if it's there. It provides a closed delivery of air to the fire, essentially isolating it from the air in the room. This has important implications if you are installing the stove in house with a range or cooktop ventilation equipment in the smae space. A w/S without an outside air connection will complicate the make-air calculations for the vent hood, creating a code issue (possibly expensive to address) and more importantly a potential safety issue (carbon monoxide). So, all in all I'm hoping you tell me the original installers set it up with an outside air connection. You can retrofit it, but with a masonry hearth it will more complex. Do you have a cellar under that part of the house? Oh, one other thing, while you are at the w/s store pick up a spray bottle of whatever they recommend for cleaning the glass doors. This is usually a fiercely vile spray made from lye, but it does the job. Use lots of newspaper under the stove and in front, and heavy duty gloves and a roll of paper towels. Do not scrape, steel wool or use a scrubby on the glass. It is special borosilicate glass intended to withstand very high temps, but small scratches made during cleaning could compromise it causing it to fail catastrophically. But when the glass is clean, or at least clean-er, the flames are lovely to see. If you're feeling affection for the stove, you can buy a tin of stove blacking which will make it look like new (though the first few fires after blacking can be mildly stinky.) I can post pics of the ash-pan lid and the small snap-on firescreen so you can see what to keep an eye out for, if that will help. I don't know if you will be able to buy these parts new for older stoves as the shapes have changed, I think. And I realized after I had posted that I had misspoke in my first post: you have VC Defiant Encore stove. Do you plan to use the stove for significant heating or just from time to time? It is a workhorse, though you will need fuel for it, and that may be hard to come by the first year - and expensive. We burn ours 24/7 once we light it in late October until the end of April. Of course we do have to shut it down once a month or so for chimney cleaning/sweeping chores which can't be done if there's any lingering fire. You can empty the ashes when the stove is burning, though it's easier, and safer to choose a point when the fire is at an very low ebb to do that. We leave a fire in when we are away from home, and of course at night. We refuel around 11:30pm/midnight, and again in the morning (one of us is a night owl and the other an early bird, so it works out OK). In deep winter the house is quite cold by the morning, but the stove re-warms it fairly quickly. If you have subs working on the house I would advise you to refuse them permission to burn the stove, there's too much risk that they think they know what they are doing, when they really don't. That goes for teenagers, babysitters, house guests and etc. Running a stove safely is very serious business. Finally, do you have small (rug-rat age) kids or cats? Kids too young to appreciate the danger of a hot surface must be protected by a fire-guard screen around the hearth itself. The good news is that kids soon grow into an age when they won't accidentally get burned. Cats not so much. Not all cats, or even most, but some cats will jump on the stove while it's burning (500-650 degrees F on the top surface) and get terrible burns on their paws. I have one cat who has done it twice. Now we have a fence around the stove. I have had literally dozens of other cats (I do feral cat rescue) who have lived here with same stove and never jumped up. As I re-read what I wrote and remembered what you said about a break in, I thought I'd also mention that inside the stove there should be a pair of detachable 6" tall cast-iron andiron brackets in the front and a removable cast iron floor grate with diagonal oepnings set in the bottom of the stove. I mention this because these items would be easily detached by thieves and sold for scrap iron. (We had an old cast iron coal stove stolen from an outbuilding last spring.) If you stove has been stripped of these parts, you'll need to get them before any fire can be lit. Hope my long post is somewhat useful to you. Let me know if you want step by step lighting instructions. (For after the stove and chimney have been checked out and certified OK to go.) L.

I love the Monocoat finish - gorgeous. It doesn't need a sealer, NC? There's also Osmo, which is Rubio's big competitor. I think they also have a white. No, it is a standalone product, one coat only (it sticks only to raw wood so no point in putting it over itself). What they told me (about using it on stairs) was that it will wear off eventually but that reapplication is simple -- you don't have to refinish the whole piece, just wipe more Monocoat over the center of the treads where it's worn off. And it is supposed to act as a sealer; it is essentially an oil finish. They told me that [major chain restaurant, name withheld because I could be remembering it wrong] uses Monocoat on its countertops. I am of course interested in this conversation, because I have a lot of it left over from the stair treads (a little goes a long way) and it is not cheap and I want something to use it on. :) So I might have to put in wood countertops just to use up my Monocoat. lol. (Mine is the Pure = clear.) What I don't know is how well it would do around a sink, especially an undermounted one. So if someone calls them to ask (or has used it themselves on a countertop), I hope you post about it! There is a thread somewhere around here about Osmo; maybe that poster will see this too. (I don't know anything about it.)

Well, well, well. A few changes to my story today. It always pays to wear your glasses when reading small print...or, in my case, any print. I NOW see that this wood sample has the "Natural" finish on it, meaning it is just mineral oil, or whatever this company uses. It states it needs to be reoiled regularly. Okay, but even this finish stinks. It's a little better today and now I don't mind picking it up with my hands. The first day, my fingers constantly smelled like fish. Last night I put a couple drops of water on the front side of the sample, went and grabbed a paper towel and wiped them off. I can still slightly see the rings this morning. Now I put some drips of water and lemon juice on the back side of the sample along with a couple of big drops of olive oil. I let it sit for maybe three minutes and wiped it off with a wet dish rag. The water and lemon look okay, but the oil is still there. Can someone comment on this? I'm a bit scared. Maybe I should go with the permanent finish? Oh no, wonder how stinky it will be?!!!! Thank you all for your comments. pup