Much more work before play....

As we get ready to go on our trip to Victoria, we have been forced to do a lot of work while the weather has been hot and sunny.

I have had several projects on the go; this one is called “The Door from Hell”.  When Brian left for his 3-day kayaking trip a month ago, I thought it was a great time to refinish the lower bathroom door.  It had been painted at least 3 times, and the other side was lovely wood, so I thought I could achieve the same thing by stripping the painted side.  For Brian’s convenience, I was going to get it all done while he was gone.  That was really stupid.  First I tried paint stripper.  Four applications and only half of the paint was gone.  Then I tried steel wool, sandpaper, and ultimately the heat gun.  Then I bought a better quality stripper.  According to a professional on the job, the door was finished in a white “faux finish” that stuck on like concrete.  In the end, I got 95% of it off, stained it and resorted with touch-up paint to cover the remaining white.  Only three weeks later, with many many hours of work done, the door was rehung.  This is called a “Five Foot Job”.  In other words, as long as you stand five feet away, it looks good.

Getting hung up on doors seemed to be the theme, because the next project was painting the white trim on two exterior door frames on either side of the breezeway.  This time, they did get stripped and repainted in just 3 days.

The final project is only part of a longer term requirement.  We had the outside of the house chinked by a professional after we moved in.  It was well worth it for the savings in energy.  What we didn’t realize was that the previous owners, in desperation had tried  silicon (as in bathtub caulking) to seal some joints.  That was a bad thing, because nothing sticks to silicone, including new silicon.  Also, some of the chinking started lifting a few years later because nothing sticks to silicon.  So, at numerous outside corners of the house, I have to strip out all the old chinking, all the old silicon and any other garbage in there.  This is not a trivial job.

Once that is done, then I have to put foam “backer rod” in the larger joints to help support the chinking, and then caulk away by hand ‘til it’s all done.

You probably will never have occasion to chink, but just in case you feel the compulsion, here are some hints from personal experience.

Choose a colour that looks nice on your face, arms and in your hair.

Work from the top down instead of bottom up:  when you go bottom up you tend to place your hands on the area you just smoothed so carefully.  Several times.

When at the top of the ladder, watch your bucket of rinse water.  It makes a spectacular mess when it drops to the ground unexpectedly.

The good news is that this is still better than door stripping.  Mostly.  And you do get worthwhile results.

To while away my time while working, I love to play my IPod, and I just bought this amazing tiny speaker that works incredibly well with it.

The bad news is that two days after I got the speaker the IPod gave up the ghost.  Now Jim has to take me shopping at Costco when I get to Edmonton.

With all that hard work done, it is now time to play.  We leave Wednesday morning for Victoria for Brian’s Military College reunion and our next post will be from there.

A Week of Work and Play

Last week started with a heck of a lot of work.  Brian rented a log splitter from an acquaintance, and we got to work moving split wood into the woodshed (which I built myself). 

We eventually got the woodshed completely filled which sets us up for a cold winter season.  I estimate the woodshed holds between 8-9 bush cords of wood; a bush cord of wood is 4 feet high, 4 feet wide and 8 feet long.  We are both relieved that that chore is done.

In the meantime, I was stripping a bathroom door of 6 coats of paint, thinking this project would take two or three days.  Instead, it has plagued me for 3 weeks.  Some of the older coats of paint were resistant to paint stripper, heating gun, steel wool polishing and sanding.  If there were a thermonuclear explosion, the door itself would burn, leaving behind an intact skeleton of white paint. Another chore was stripping paint from a couple of outside doorframes, which were much more cooperative when faced with the heat gun.  There are no pictures of this, because I don't want to look.

All this work justified an adventure day on Friday.  We started the tradition of adventure days some years ago, where we would go out to something or somewhere new.  Friday featured a trip to French River, about a 2 hour drive north of us.

This little park had a tremendous museum, focusing on the activities of the voyageurs, since this was a main route from Lake Nipissing to Georgian Bay.

A fundamental aspect of the French River is that it is carved through Precambrian Shield by glacial activity, and it is not terribly wide.

We followed a foot trail through to Recollet Falls, which was a challenge to the big freighter canoes.  The change in level was not dramatic, but there apparently were more than a few dunkings.

The foot trail was a challenge to humans.  At first we thought the trail was paved, and then we realized that it was on highly polished rock, sometimes covered by very determined vegetation.

It was a great adventure day because we learned about far more history than we expected, we had a good walk in nature, and we went out for dinner afterwards.  Now back to work.