Ye Olde Red Brick House

I've been averaging about 4-5 hours of sanding every Saturday & Sunday. My hands have blisters; my arms, back & even legs hurt after using my orbital sander for such long periods of time.   This is the difference between sanded, on the left and non-sanded on the right. I've been working on the porch rails too... this is what it looks like after being sanded and primed.   (below: after one hour of sanding) New blogger puts my photos in a different order... grr (below: this is what the rails looked like before sanding ~ yuck)   I need to fix this corner. I believe the previous owners removed the boards so they could put some sort of brace under the bricks. This corner slants quite a bit... I used 16 of this sanding discs today!   I need to finish sanding a small section tomorrow, then prime for painting.

Friday evening I sprayed the deck cleaner on, waited 20 minutes, rinsed and scraped the top layer of paint off. It made a pretty big difference! Saturday morning, I was up bright and early with the sander. I sanded for about 2 hours! The lattice was in bad shape, but I got all of the paint flakes removed. I hate sanding against edges, because a splinter went under my nail TWICE on the same finger. It drew blood and I cursed a lot. Yuck... Got the floor all smooth... I love both of these products! Well worth the price. I filled in several deep scratches like this.... I got it primed yesterday afternoon. And finished painting it a little while ago. I love this color! I'm going back out the afternoon to sand down the 2nd layer of wood filler. Then I'll prime the section by the door.

This is how my porch looked yesterday. The spring decor was extremely dusty! There were enough cobwebs & spiders to scare all the little children on Halloween. I decided I am going to clean/strip/paint my huge wrap-around in 3 sections. Mainly cause I have a lot of crap on my porch and don't want to haul it all to the garage. I removed all the chairs & washed them down with the water hose. That's my grand-daughter Jewell supervising from the 'mountain' as she called it. After blowing all the dirt & debris... This deck spray worked pretty good! I loved how I was able to hook up to the water hose. I sprayed it on and let it soak for 10 minutes. Then scrubbed it with the push broom. Sprayed again. Scrubbed again. Rinsed. Section 2. Section 3. Hopefully tomorrow I can strip the paint in Section 1 I need to figure out what color I want before the weekend!

Definitely need to repair/strip and repaint the wrap-around porch before it starts getting cold. Hopefully I can start this next weekend. I checked out the Benjamin Moore Arborcoat Water Exterior Stain for deck & siding on Friday... and I must admit, I love a lot of the colors. However, going with a stain will be many many more hours of work then stripping and re-painting. I also need to repair the cement steps... this is the worst one. But, I think before I jump into those projects, removing all the spring/summer decor and switching over to fall is a must. I love fall decorations and look forward to it every year.

I have the ugliest box beam ceilings ever... they were painted this hideous yellow eons ago. (This is a *before move-in* photo.) I started stripping the redwood quite awhile back, gave up and started doing other projects that don't involve inhaling paint fumes from a heat gun. So, I know from that little adventure that I just don't have it in me to strip the paint off of the coffered ceiling. It would take 30 years or so... So, I've decided to do this. Like exactly. I love the white beams and red walls. I will need to sand down the paint drips and prime the horrid shiny yellow, but I know this is how I want my dining room to look! I went back and forth between navy blue and red several times. I'm pretty sure I'm going with the red... but we'll see by the time I get around to starting this project. photo via: This Old House I'm also considering doing something that never even crossed my mind before finding a photo of a stenciled floor on Pinterest. These are...

Some people use their sun-room for eating... I use mine to store paint supplies because it gets hot here and I don't want them to go bad in the garage. I spent a good portion of my Saturday putting together these steel book shelves, so worth $45 apiece! I can actually find all my paint supplies now! No more digging around for a paint can opener or stir stick, thank you very much. spray paint addiction much? I love love love Rust-oleum; it is the BEST my new spray gun, cause I don't want to paint a box beam ceiling by hand...

I felt it was just a little bit plain on this side... so I was back out there again on Monday... I have the worst luck ever when it comes to digging. I always find an old sprinkler system pipe or 4" wide oak tree root... I bought this cute little palm tree with a $25 gift certificate I had I am aware my bricks are unlevel, but I was too tired to be ocd on this project. I'll fix it eventually, I'm sure of it!