Back to the House

In between working on the garden in the evenings, I have been taking one or two days off each week since August to remove the old paint from one of the walls on the back of the house.


The picture above shows how much paint scrapped loose before I started using the heat gun to remove the remainder of it. It took me about a month to remove all the paint.


During the week of September 12, I started using my oscillating sander to sand down to the wood. I also brought a detailer sander this year. It has sped up the sanding in the areas I could not reach with the other sander. Last year it took me several days to hand sand the small wall with the screen door on it and the surface area is twice that this year. After a one and a half day of sanding I have completed this much.


I found dry rot in the window sill and pull off the front section to replace. The area left, I will treat with a hardener before replacing the bad section. The picture below shows why I have the rot in the sill. Why the PO let the roof end on top of a window, I will never know. I decide to leave it this way because sometime in the future the kitchen needs to be completely gutted and I can move it then.


Next week I am taking off from work and hope to finish the sanding, priming, caulking and painting it, I pray and hope.

Can't keep up with the garden or give it away, donate it.

Over the last month I been busy in the garden as usually. I have canned many quarts of tomato juice, V-8 like juice, whole tomatoes, and paste tomatoes. I still have tomatoes ripening on the vine so there will be more to can. I also have a yellow paste (also called Roma) and green zebra tomatoes which I brought to work because I cannot can them and have no freezer space left. It took about three days for them to disappear from work so the next load of yellow and green zebra I donated to Second Harvest. It would have been a waste to let them rot and they were very happy to receive them. I wished I would have thought about this earlier because I been letting my cherry tomatoes rot on the vines because I could not give them away to the neighbors. I think threw away about 4 lb before it dawn on me to do this. The woman who took my donation told me they do not received very many fresh vegetables from the general public. So if you are being overwhelmed with produce from your garden think about donating it to your locate food pantry or to Second Harvest.

A Free Craig's List Find

This June I found the chair above on Craig's List for free, I cannot believe I was the first to ask for it. The chair needed to be cleaned with 1,2,3 solution and bottom rungs were reglued. I removed the velvet sit covering and will replace it with recycled leather in the color burgundy. I will start upholstering it after I finish making my suede cushions for my two Morris-like chairs. The Morris chairs are located on the three season porch. I also finish the antique wing chair which is show torn apart in a previous blog but have just been too busy in the garden to write about it yet. I have no idea where I am going to put chair showed above since the house is starting to fill up. If I find anymore chairs I like, I will have to sell or give away one of the newer aged chair I reupholster so there will be room for it. My mother's comment to that was remember me.