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Decorated for Memorial Day weekend. Almost more
proud of lawn than anything else. Almost. |
***I finished this blog back in June. I was hoping it would improve with age***
Once again we had someone stop in front of our house, compliment our work and tell us how nice the house looks. It's very gratifying to hear and to reflect on the work that's been done. Problem is it feels like the list of things to do just does not seem any shorter. One thing slowing me down is regular maintenance. For example, I've now painted the porch stairs for the third time. They get full sun all year, snow, ice and the winter chemicals. Being stairs, they get scuffed with nearly every footstep. Still, I had hoped the paint would last longer. Another on going maintenance battle/headache is the leaky bathroom tub which maddeningly insists on dropping water into the kitchen from time to time, damaging the ceiling. I fear the only true fix will be a complete to the studs rip out of the tub and enclosure and re-installation. Something I *might* be able to do but with only one shower in the house, certainly not quickly enough.
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| Working on the frame for the screen from the pantry window. |
One major project is the original windows. Every single one of them needs to be removed, cleaned, scraped, glazed and painted. Many of them need new ropes to their window weights. I actually did start this project a couple years ago when I fixed the attic windows. I figured they would be a good place to start being that they were essentially on the third floor and more difficult to see my amateur job. Then recently I decided to start what I through would be a quick job, scrapping and repainting the old screen window for the pantry. Well, as often happens, there turned out to be more to it as I accidentally poked a hole in the screen, then upon removal of the screen, noticed rotting of frame itself. I considered just building an entire new window frame, but in the end decided that there was enough there worth saving. So after a complete tear down and rebuild including replacement of some of the wood and all of the trim, the afternoon project turned into work spread over several days. The completed job came out nice.
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| Finished job |
Since I was repairing the screen, I decided to strip out and replace the glazing in the window. Removing the window would have been difficult since it is a "pocket" window so I decided to repair it in place. That was difficult and I'm a bit out of practice so not my neatest job ever. Good news is that the window is finished, functional, and better than when I started. Did prove that in the future I need to take all windows completely down and out of the frame before I repair them.
On the next blog: The bar is open! (I meant the one in our house).
