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