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Sometimes it feels good to just get stuff done around the house.  Brian and I came up with plenty of things to do today, so we decided to skip hiking and spend the day on home projects.

We started out touching up the house paint that we’d scraped previously. It’s a 2-person job: I hold the ladder while Brian reaches the tall patches. I have lots of good painting memories that were recalled today.  Going to the basement to search for the right colors among our many gallons of house paint, I recalled helping Dad by figuring out what can of half-used paint matched which job.  “Oh, that’s the back bedroom at Pontiac Street!” or in this case “Tea color is the door frame in the kitchen, it’s more orange than the front door.”  Brian and I both worked on touching up the back of the house, where there is no ladder required.  It reminded me of many paint projects in Indiana, the fun times at WILG spent painting, and later painting with roomates on Essex Street.  We made quick work of job #1 of the day.  But, “While we’re at it…” idea #2 was born, when I mused how nice it would be if I painted the shed today too.

Next, with the ladder already out, we decided to wash the windows.  This was a bit of an adventure, because we didn’t just mean to grab some windex and paper towels.  We aimed to clean the outside windows, including the 2nd story ones to the bedrooms.  Next stop, Kelly’s Hardware, to get a squeegee on a telescoping pole, plus some ammonia and a spray bottle.  We also picked up a new doormat, a shop vac, and a furnace filter.  We headed to Tendercrop to get some straw for the strawberries while we were out.

Now to tackle the windows.  What possesses house painters to paint windows shut?  We don’t know, but we’re not pleased.  It’s hard to describe the process of trying to open the storm from the inside, loosening it, going outside to get up on a ladder with a putty knife to try to loosen the window from the outside, repeat in differing orders until the window actually opens.  Punctuate with trying to reach behind the half-open window to see how much of the other side can be cleaned.  With many skinned knuckles, a chipped putty knife, and otherwise unharmed windows and Juddmansees, we now have two sparklingly clear windows in our bedroom and the 2nd floor landing window also has been freed.  By this point we called it a day on the window wrestling, and decided that Beej would continue to clean the outside of the storms, while I returned to painting.

Brian had replaced the hardware on our front door a while back, and had used wood putty to plug the holes that were no longer needed.  I did the touch-up today to cover the holes and un-painted parts, so it now looks like a normal red door.  Although the afternoon was growing late by this point, the shed was calling.

While I tackled the front of the shed, Brian changed the furnace filter, shop-vacuumed up the paint chips, took the swing canopy inside for the winter, and started cleaning up the various window and paint supplies.  I also managed to cover the strawberries before it got completely dark.  Here’s the finished shed!

phew!  It was a busy day for the Juddmansees!