What's next? Well, it's not on the list...

A beautiful late Spring sky. 

I almost named this blog Miscellaneous Part 4, but decided to be a bit more clever. I'm not sure I succeeded. In any event, this edition has no particular subject, mainly since I've not worked on any projects that would fill a blog. That's not to say that we haven't made progress.

Fixing up this house sometime feels like I'm trying to bail out the ocean. Long range projects compete with short term repairs and on going maintenance. Also, there's that pesky work thing in which they expect me to show up at least 5 days a week and perform tasks for them, if I expect to be paid. Considering all this, Cindy and I are discussing which major project we need to take on next. The two in the running are the kitchen and the bathroom. I'm pretty comfortable that I have finally fixed the chronic tub leak, so the kitchen ceiling below needs a repair and paint job, as do the walls. In the bathroom, a major renovation is somewhere in the future, but in the meantime a paint job and tile repair is in order. Cindy preferred to do the bathroom first and I didn't feel strongly either way so the choice was made. The decision having been made, naturally I went on and did something else.

Cindy kind of surprised me with her utter disdain for the stairwell going to the basement. On the list of things to do, this stairwell was not even on my radar but when she pointed out how dirty and dingy it was, I realized she made a good point. The cream colored walls were smeared with hand prints and general dirt. Whoever had painted it, had used a flat wall paint making it look even uglier and better at catching grime. I already had a gallon or so of pure white satin finish paint so this should be an easy and quick job, right? Oh you optimistic fool!  It turned out taking two full days of difficult work.

This stuff is the best.

First, I took the handrail down. Easy enough. I put it in the basement and assigned Cindy the task of cleaning nearly a hundred years of hand grime and grease off the railing. It turned her wash bucket water black. Yuck. I began to look at the walls and quickly realized two things: There were a lot dents and holes in the walls, and, I had several different surfaces to work with. For the holes, it was a fairly simple matter to get out the patch repair stuff and fill them in. The surfaces, and general poor condition of them, required more thought and work. The wall types were standard plaster on lathe, our famous exterior wall finished block, poured concrete, and finally a wooden wainscoting type surface on the lower interior section. All were stained in one way or another, but the concrete especially had water and rust stains that would never be covered by regular paint. So, I decided to go with BIN. The stuff smells bad, is a pain to work with, and it destroys any paint brush you use with it, but it really does a good job sealing and covering stains. It's not cheap either, but I decided to do the entire block wall and the poured concrete with BIN before painting. Luckily, it dries quickly and I was able to get the first finish coat on before the end of the day. The next day I did a second coat to even out the job. It looks great.

Of course, there's the stairs themselves. The paint on them is worn, plus now there's a bit of white wall paint on them as well. It looks like the last time they were painted they used standard semi gloss wall paint in a deep brown. I already have the light chocolate floor paint I used on the porch, but that may actually be a bit too light for the stairs. We still haven't chosen a color yet so that job remains open.

Elsewhere, I did manage to plant some flowers in two huge pots we had sitting around. I did a red, white, and blue theme in flowers and they actually look pretty good. They sit in the yard at the front corners of the porch. Around back, I did some more weeding in the "flower" beds and added some fresh while marble stone after spaying some weed killer on the edges. The weed barrier I laid down last year apparently lasts only one year. Rats. Next year I may have to remove the stone, double down on the weed barrier, and put the stone back.

I've been carefully avoiding the tree roots with the lawnmower so I've had no more problems. We've had a pretty wet year and the grass is really growing, so naturally I'm quite pleased with the new mower. Instead of pretty much using up a day, I can finish the entire thing in less than an hour, and not be tired. In fact, I can do it easily after work now.