Friday, May 2, 2014

Back in the Painting Saddle

When we last joined you in fall 2013, we had just finished up scraping and painting the porch of the Bangor Foursquare. Needless to say, it was a LOT more work that we had originally anticipated. The winter months were therefore a bit of a nice respite from this back-breaking, callous-causing, seemingly endless work. However, spring is now upon us here in Maine - finally! - and it is about time to resume the scrapity-scrape-scrape.

If you recall, when working on the porch last fall we ran across this one rotten spindle hiding under all of the paint. Surprisingly, this was the only rotten piece of anything we found in our labors thus far:


I went to my favorite mill working shop, Owen Gray and Son in Brewer, and got a replacement made for the bargain price of $10. We'll be putting that up this weekend I hope and painting it.

We also need to think about the porch stairs before we are officially done with the porch. As porch stairs are wont to do, the paint has been worn off a few of them by shoveling and salt. I don't know if we're just relegated to having to paint them every single year (sigh) or if there is some creative way of dealing with it. We're certainly open to suggestions.

So, now, we begin to turn our attention to a new part of the house. Our original plan was to tackle this side of the house, which faces the other street (we're on a corner):


However, what you can't see from this photo is that this side of the house sits on a slope. We're just not brave enough to deal with ladders or scaffolding here. We're hoping we can finagle a lift or something for a week maybe later this year so we can just pound it out and avoid major bodily harm.

The plan, then, is to tackle the side of the house that faces away from all streets, which probably is a bit anti-climactic but more practical. There are some pretty details on that side of the house, though, which might make it a little more interesting. Here is a picture from last fall when Tim attempted to use some ridiculous tool that we bought from Home Depot, but which failed miserably.


Anyway, we're hoping to get started soon. We'll update, of course. Until then, we'll be resting up our hands, our backs, and our patience.