The past week has felt like a marathon; the finish line is being able to make the call to the scaffolding company to say that we're ready for them to take the scaffold down.
We've been working full-tilt – André was in fact supposed to fly back to New York today, but we're not quite where we need to be so he's postponed his trip by a day. It's important that we get the scaffolding down now - mostly because it's very expensive to keep renting it, but also because psychologically, we are really ready to move forward. And I think that at this point we owe it to our neighbours to get it down, too!
Today we finally finished something on the long to-do list for getting the scaffolding down: the rest of the exterior painting. André and I had worked together last weekend to paint the first
window, and yesterday I started working on the other windows. In order to get everything done as quickly as possible, I had to do it on my own because André was working upstairs, at roof level.
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| The front windows before scraping and painting |
Like
last weekend, the work was quite involved - I had to prep the windows by scraping off as much of the old, peeling paint as possible and fill in any rotten areas with putty before painting.
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| A detail of the window's condition |
It all went a lot faster than last weekend because these ones are in better condition (and my technique got better as I went along). But all told, on average it still took about 3 hours per window!
Meanwhile, André had been spending ages over the previous few days prepping the exterior of the dormer for painting – he had to apply an exterior conditioning treatment and then putty over all the screws. Once the putty dried, it had to be sanded so that the dormer would have a smooth, even finish once painted..
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| June 25th - Applying the wood conditioner - will make the wood ready for the exterior elements |
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| June 27th - After waiting 2 days for the treatment to dry, patching all the holes & joints with an exterior grade filler putty |
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| June 30th - All the screw holes and joints had to be filled with putty - turned out to be a huge job |
Once the dormer was ready, I primed and painted it in between working on the windows. This was a carefully planned tag-team operation, because we were supposed to wait 16-24 hours for each coat to dry - and we found ourselves running out of time! So the primer went on the dormer early Saturday evening; the first coat of paint on Sunday morning; and the second on Sunday night.
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| July 2nd - Starting the primer... |
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| André touching up the primer |
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July 3rd - Starting the first coat of exterior paint
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André insisted on three coats of paint, so I had to wait til getting home from work today to put the final coat of paint on! In the evening I also painted the balcony posts and the clips that will attach the railing to the posts (André had painted the balcony railing during the day).
It's been an absolutely exhausting three days. We've made huge progress, and it's an amazing feeling to finally be able to step back and look at something that looks finished! But there are still so many things to be done before I can make that phone call…
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| July 4th - The painting completed! |
