Slow Progress On Windows

  
The progress on my living room and dining room windows has been going very slowly. This is partly because it is one of my least favorite tasks and partly because it creates so much to clean up from old flaking paint and sanding. All of this definitely reduces my enthusiasm!

If able to do this all over again, I would probably delay the floor restoration until after the windows had been completed. It really is best to work from the ceiling downward to the floor, although looking back, there were some places in the floor where you could fall through!

(This photograph was taken October 2015. There is still more work to do, but the way that the crisp white window casings stand out against the walls is very nice and will hopefully be a motivator.)

Tea Olive (Osmanthus Fragrans)

  
This is an evergreen tree that I bought last year in the late summer. I wanted to have several flowering trees and shrubs that would along the path to my back door so that I would have them to enjoy on the way out and then back into my house.

The transplant space was not ready until this spring, and this past winter was a bit harsh. Half planting the nursery pot with the tree in it seems to have been helpful for its winter survival, though I think it would have grown more if transplanted before the cold season.

(This photograph was taken September 2015. Sadly this image does not capture the incredible fragrance of these small blossoms!)

Hey!!! What’s On That Brush?!?

This is most probably my least favorite indoor old house renovation project. It’s messy. It’s slow. It’s tedious. Most importantly, it’s avoidable. At least it would have been avoidable with some forethought many years ago. This peeling paint is caused when two different kinds of paint are used over time.

In my house, the original paint would have been oil-based and there were several re-paintings using that type of paint. Then many years later when latex water-based paint became popular, that was used for a few more re-paintings. The results don’t show until many years later.

Since I’ve owned this house, more of this paint on the woodwork has begun to crack and peel. This winter, an especially cold one, there were mornings when I could stand in the living room or dining room and clearly hear and see the paint cracking, peeling, and popping up.

The only way that I know to correct this is to remove the paint down to the wood, sand, prime and repaint. The only way that I know to prevent this is to keep accurate paint records to give to future owners. Otherwise someone has a lot of unpleasant work!

This photo was taken July 2015. It’s not the worst example of peeling paint in my house, just an average example of peeling paint. This is my summer indoor renovation project.