Thursday, October 30, 2014

I'm STILL painting the house.

Even though it has been nearly two years since the last post, I thought I'd let the three or four readers who might still be out there know that I am still painting the house.

Last weekend was a beautiful near record couple of days which allowed me to finish painting the interior of the front porch. I had been working on that since mid July when I finished the last of the north side.Here is a picture from some time in early July when I was finishing on the side:
 Once I was finished the north side, I started on the porch. I knew I could not possibly remove all the paint from the beadboard ceiling, so I ended up using a random orbital sander and 60 grit paper, followed by 80 grit. This took off the loose stuff and gave me a good smooth surface where there was tight paint remaining. The porch is 8 feet deep and 34 feet long. I worked in thirds, hung drapes to contain the paint dust and wore my usual HEPA filter mask and goggles.Here is that part of the porch now. I managed to finish the first third barely before Labor Day weekend. Most of this project has been worked around home Iowa football games.



Since there were three consecutive weeks of home games I didn't get to start on the middle third of the porch until late September. This was the portion around the front door. I managed to get this completed right before Homecoming.
Lisa had gotten very nice house numbers, but they were a dark patina brass. I took out my 150 grit sandpaper and managed to shine up the numbers enough so that they can be seen from the street. I found a hammered copper doorbell to match the house numbers.

Here is the last portion that I just finished. I put up the new screens and hung the porch swing back up. Of course there is a home game on Saturday. Unfortunately the temperature Saturday morning is predicted to be 24 degrees, We probably won't sit out there long...