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A Bit of a Working Day
Sep. 25th, 2010 10:33 pmNo gaming today. We took a week off to try and align our two gaming finales on weeks where whoever wants can attend (to partial success, but what can you do?). So I decided to start on a project.
All of the paint on our external window sills has started peeling and cracking horribly since we've moved into the house. No idea why. It's particularly pronounced on our south-facing windows, but probably something should be done about all of them.
So after picking up some supplies yesterday (and talking with a very helpful guy in paints and a very unhelpful guy in tools, who then tried to kill himself in front of me by falling off a ladder), today I started in on our biggest window, our south-facing dining room window.
The paint is just horrible. Worse, at some time some of the idiots who have done work on the house in the past slathered some heavy white gunk on a few of the worst spots as some type of quick-fix resealant. It's all in bad enough shape that I really need to sand and scrape the paint back down to the wood, and the white gunk is a particular challenge. Overall I got maybe 60-70% of the (large) bottom sill and did some work on the sides.
The wood in the bottom sill is not particularly great. It's got a lot of ripples in it on one side, causing hills and valley. But as I slowly sanded it down, I decided it was indeed salvageable. Having now seen the scope of the project (mind you, I only worked for about 2 hours this morning, until it got hot), I've decided my first goal is to finish off that. The side sills (where the wood is better, but there are enough different surfaces that they'll take some serious work) will have to wait for another day.
After a few hours more work tomorrow, I hope to have the bottom sill clean, after which I'll use wood filler in some cracks and valleys and recaulk the bottom of the window. Then I can prime it on Monday night and paint it on Tuesday night. Whew. Actually, the priming and painting should both be pretty quick; it's just the getting the old paint off that takes time.
I'm hoping it'll look a lot better when I'm done. If so I'm going to gradually attack all the ground floor windows as time allows.
So, maybe it was just a bit of work in the morning, but it felt like real work, as I don't usually do handy stuff. After that it was out to lunch, a browse through a couple of book stores on the way home, writing on the history book in the afternoon, planning next year's Hawaii trip in the early evening (yay!), and then sandwiches over 49 Up.
And now it is night.
All of the paint on our external window sills has started peeling and cracking horribly since we've moved into the house. No idea why. It's particularly pronounced on our south-facing windows, but probably something should be done about all of them.
So after picking up some supplies yesterday (and talking with a very helpful guy in paints and a very unhelpful guy in tools, who then tried to kill himself in front of me by falling off a ladder), today I started in on our biggest window, our south-facing dining room window.
The paint is just horrible. Worse, at some time some of the idiots who have done work on the house in the past slathered some heavy white gunk on a few of the worst spots as some type of quick-fix resealant. It's all in bad enough shape that I really need to sand and scrape the paint back down to the wood, and the white gunk is a particular challenge. Overall I got maybe 60-70% of the (large) bottom sill and did some work on the sides.
The wood in the bottom sill is not particularly great. It's got a lot of ripples in it on one side, causing hills and valley. But as I slowly sanded it down, I decided it was indeed salvageable. Having now seen the scope of the project (mind you, I only worked for about 2 hours this morning, until it got hot), I've decided my first goal is to finish off that. The side sills (where the wood is better, but there are enough different surfaces that they'll take some serious work) will have to wait for another day.
After a few hours more work tomorrow, I hope to have the bottom sill clean, after which I'll use wood filler in some cracks and valleys and recaulk the bottom of the window. Then I can prime it on Monday night and paint it on Tuesday night. Whew. Actually, the priming and painting should both be pretty quick; it's just the getting the old paint off that takes time.
I'm hoping it'll look a lot better when I'm done. If so I'm going to gradually attack all the ground floor windows as time allows.
So, maybe it was just a bit of work in the morning, but it felt like real work, as I don't usually do handy stuff. After that it was out to lunch, a browse through a couple of book stores on the way home, writing on the history book in the afternoon, planning next year's Hawaii trip in the early evening (yay!), and then sandwiches over 49 Up.
And now it is night.