Archive for category painting

Quick updates

I won’t get in the habit of posting about the house if I don’t get in the habit of posting about the house.

QED.

Recent work, as opposed to rearranging stuff to make room for the NY stuff, includes:

  • painting the porch eaves
  • painting the sides of the house to at least the top of the second story windows
  • various sealing and puttying on eaves and trim
  • installation of some new shelves in the laundry room

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Paint goes on…

There are four sections of exterior wall that still need painting, and the plan is that they will all be completed this summer – maybe even this month if the weather continues to cooperate. All are second-story sections, three on the west wall (the windward side of the house, so these probably should have gotten attention sooner; at least the shingles are in good shape) and one on the east.

Other things have happened on the house since I last wrote, of course, but today’s *fretfully* exciting update is that one of the four sections – the smallest, easiest to tackle, and least in need of tackling section, that which is north-most on the west side) is almostverynearlynotquite done! All it needs is to paint the five foot by one foot section that looks remarkably like the outline of a ladder’s top.

Also, I swear to some overhead being that the gravel driveway expansion is nearly finished and ready for testing. In the words of Hamlet’s father: SWEAR!

Update (Tuesday night): The five square feet of unpainted wall have been painted. Tada!

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Up and at ’em

This morning, accomplished a few things, which is good because my afternoons are all Hamlet and my evenings are becoming time for other things. Plus no one likes hammering in their neighborhood at 7pm.

  • More leveling and gravelling – almost done, maybe, I think, perhaps
  • Nailed part of one wall of shingles, almost ready to paint.
  • Transplanted another tree from the edge of the new parking spaces to replace the old dying walnut in the backyard. We’ll see if I didn’t kill this one like I did the last. Note: When digging up a seedling, always dig wider than you’d think, then deeper than you’d think, to avoid the taproot.

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Today…

Did some scraping on the west side of house to prep for nailing and maybe painting tomorrow AM.

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Catching up…

Winding down with my temporary work, applied for a full-time job, and juggling a few other side projects means I’ve been doing a little less on the house and posting about that with even greater infrequency. Since the last post, I’ve pulled another 20’+ of old gas pipe out of the attic, moved a number of items to the shed (despite the near freezing temperatures and snow flurries that have descended upon town) meaning I once again have a foyer and am close to having a back room, and have been dealing on and off with the pipe clog. Using a borrowed drain snake I was able to reach the clog, but it seems to be quite big and solid – hair, most likely. Repeated jabs with the augur didn’t get me anywhere. I was set to try some lye, but the stuff I had had truned into a rock and you’re not supposed to chip it out and use it. Having had no luck opening the stand pipe cover either, I think I’ll grab some washing soda, and some nasty chemical drain cleaner, when I’m at the store Sunday.

More updates as they are warranted.

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With friends like these…

I should have more people over more regularly. It’s not just the multi-person projects that get done (painting part of one of the exterior walls, for example), something about having other people around gets me more active, to the point that I’ll swap a couple of mismatched cabinet handles in the kitchen (that I’ve been staring at for months) while we’re all standing around and chatting.

Sarah and Mike stopped over today and we did the above plus: mapped out shed dimensions to make sure I’m placing it well; installed a new jack in the basement to replace one that was missing (!); moved all the tree limbs that came down in the storm the other week to the front for city pickup; and I just put some plumbers tape on a valve in the upstairs shower to stop a small drip.

Pictures soon.

,

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Scraping and painting, and problems with both (now with pictures!).

Plenty of both the last couple of days. I’ve got one renter moving in right now and am trying to get all the upstairs rooms painted (if they need it). This is mostly standard stuff – tape off, roller, brush, clean up (got an excellent selection of self-priming paints from Sherwin Williams so things go even faster) – but I have one problem in the back bedroom:

A section of the wallboard had cracked and buckled, probably from someone years ago putting their elbow through the other side of the wall. Whatever the reason, I needed to cut the section out down to the plaster. The plan was to buy some drywall or wallboard of the same thickness, tack it into the space, spackle the edges, and paint the whole wall. Unfortunately, this wallboard or whatever is just under a quarter inch thick and something like it probably hasn’t been manufactured in years, according to other people who know old buildings. Home Depot certainly doesn’t seem to have anything. I’m thinking about just spackling the entire hole, although that seems like a huge waste of spackle, or tacking luan or other wood into the space, although that seems like it will produce a wall with wildly different surfaces.


I’m also continuing to hack at the porch. I finished the entire lower rail today, plan to get the entire ceiling done within the next couple of days, but am really not looking forward to dealing with the spindles which have thick paint that is either cracking or not moving.


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