Week ending 8/28/09

On Monday I spent 3 hours shellacking and only got part of a coat done. I still hope I can make my September goal. The finished areas look really good - I'll catch it out of the corner of my eye and think "wow!"

On Thursday, I spent 4.5 hours finishing the coat and I may still make my end of September goal. The next milestone will be getting all the trim up and getting the miter saw out of the house.

Hours to date on windows and doors: 308.25

Here you can see the last section of the back door to get done. I'm amazed at how much the shellac improves the wood. It gets a rich, subtle glow that seems a part of the wood and not a surface covering. Here's why I work so hard:

Week ending 8/21/09

On Monday, I spent 2 hours repairing damage to the windows caused by incompetent window washers. The bastards haven't even placed the order for the replacement parts yet. I'm not counting this in my window and door hours total.

On Thursday, I spend 2 hours prepping the interior doors for shellac. The contractor I hired to install the doors (the second one actually, who was hired to fix the screw ups of the first) spent hours telling me how "anal" he is. Well, his work was so incredibly sloppy I couldn't believe it. The very first time I ever did woodworking it looked better than this. I am still hoping to shellac on Monday and stay on track to finish at the end of September.

On Friday, I spent another 2 hours finishing prep for Monday's shellac coat. Everything that can be done ahead of time is except I have to resand a door. I spot-sanded it yesterday and when I inspected it today in the daylight it looked uneven.

Hours to date on windows and doors: 300.75. I can't believe I passed the 300 hour mark.

Week ending 8/14/09

On Saturday, we spent 5 hours on the house. Ugh, not fun. We did figure out how I am going to install the statwall in the garage. We have a cool idea of finishing an entire section of wall with 1x6 and then attaching the slatwall to that. Not only will it finish the wall, but we will have an entire section of wall that can handle a screw or nail.

We also worked on the wiring. We rearranged some shelves in the closet where we've carved out a server/hub area. We got one speaker mounted in the living room. There's still a big, nasty wire but even so, between the shade and the speaker being properly mounted that corner looks a lot better.

On Monday, I spend 2 hours and finished the prep on the back door. It looks great. I still need to do the taping on the handles, but that's best done right before I shellac as it tends to fall off with use.

total so far on windows and doors: 296.75 hours

Week ending 8/7/09

On Monday, I spent an hour and a half sanding the back door and finished half of the door (it's a double door). No wonder the house still looks the way it does - an hour and a half of hard work and it doesn't even show.

On Thursday, I spent another .75 hours on the back door (still on prep) and took a first pass at fixing the damage to the center post (one of the two doors has some wood that looks like a post when the doors are closed. When the doors are open, the entire doorway is clear). Our younger dog did a little chewing on it when he was a puppy.

I also spent 2 hours putting up the first window shade! Yay, at long last it is up. What a great, if small, milestone.

Yes, at long last, it's finally up. After two years of looking, one wrong-sized shade, another shade ordered, two week wait, hours spent finding and making a shim to fit the slanted frame to a flat bracket, shellacking the shim, and tonight, 2 hours mounting it and cleaning the trash bags and tape residue off the window it's finally up! It works perfectly and looks great from inside and out. It's exactly what i wanted and color is perfect. I'm so glad it's done (only 11 more windows to go plus 3 doors :-) )

It is just a bit too narrow, but it's fine. I'll order the next one a little wider. I followed their measuring instructions and got a too-wide shade so I ordered this one the width of the sash (the part that moves up and down) and it's a little too narrow. Next time I'll do sash plus perhaps 1/4 inch.

Here is the before picture showing the window covered in white trash bags taped into place. The lighting is a bit off because I'm working at night with a work light.

Here is the after!

You have to admit, it's a big improvement!

Here's the cool part: The shade is cordless and top down/bottom up. Here it is opening from the bottom:




And here it is opening from the top. This is great because our house is just one story, so this way we can get light and air coming in on top of the window and still have privacy from the outside.



On Friday, I was back on the windows and doors and spent another 1.5 hours on the back door. I did more putty and sanding and removed some water damage from the bottom. It was very intense and physcial and I spent a lot of time sitting and laying on wet dirty ground outside the back door. The heavy sanding is done and at my next work session I just have to address putty'd areas and do smooth sanding.

294.75 hours on windows and doors to date

The usual "I'm still here" message

I am though.... the last post took almost half an hour to write after I already had the notes in the page. It takes a while and time is short. As I write this, the date is November 14. Someday I'll get caught up.