Finished... Almost

We are both dead tired after working from early this morning until dinner time.  Rain was predicted for today, but a glance at the morning newscast showed that most of the rain was going to go to our south.  That turned out to be the case, so we grabbed this opportunity to make further progress on painting the outside of the house.

The completed garage window.  Eventually, Rick plans
to skim coat and paint the interior walls. 

I start, though, with a picture of our finished garage window.  When the new window was installed, we did not like how the installer plastered the window inside.  As I mentioned in my last blog, when we looked at it, we noted that something had leaked down the wall and that the plaster around the window had come loose.  We discovered the leak is due to the HVAC system; we will add caulk to solve that problem.  We chose to remove the plaster around the window, to smooth the surfaces so they match the windows in the rest of the house, and to add some vinyl molding around the window to dress it up and to complete the look.  The picture shows the result.  We now have a weather tight, more securely fastened, and certainly better looking window than we had before.

Rick removes the paint on the back wall of the garage
and laundry room.

As soon as we were able to make noise today without incurring the wrath of the neighbors, Rick was firing up the pressure washer to remove the paint on the back wall (east side) of the garage.  He had hoped to get the east garage wall and the north Florida room wall complete.  As it turned out, he worked past the lunch hour and well into the afternoon to also remove the paint from the east Florida room wall.  He worked to the point of exhaustion.  I took over the last little bit of paint under the triple windows, and we had everything completed by 5:00 p.m.  The pictures, I hope, speak to that effort.

By early afternoon, the paint is gone from the east
garage wall and the north Florida room wall.

We had to deal with minor water seepage around the doors, but the rest of the house stayed dry throughout this pressure washing.  Of course, what awaits us is patching, sealing, and two coats of paint on all of these walls.  The garage wall with all of the electrical, water, and phone boxes needs the most work, mostly because of the numerous old phone boxes that we had to remove.  We also have various holes that anchored wires, and one large hole where the dryer vent used to go through the wall. The other walls should be easier because they have lots of windows and doors.  They are a pain to paint around, but the overall surface will take much less paint than the other walls.

We are finished blasting paint off of Gladys.  Our next step is to
make her beautiful with a fresh coat of sealer and paint.

And then there are the soffits and fascia boards.  That is just an on-going chore.  Rick has to apply two finish-coats of paint to the north soffits and fascia.  He also needs to add some caulk and patching compound to keep that wall dry on the inside.  Once that is done, he can hang the tall ladder back on the garage wall, hopefully to stay there for quite a while.  While he is working on the north side, I can continue to scrape paint off soffits on the Florida room and behind the garage.  We have lots to do yet, but with teamwork, we are making progress.  We can now say that we are finished pressuring washing off the old paint.  Now we just need to take steps to apply the new sealer and paint where it is needed.

Rick cleans the mold and grime off the
cement by the Florida room and laundry
room doors.  What a difference that makes!

One last thing that Rick did was to power wash the slab outside the back doors.  As anyone in Florida will tell you, cement does not do well in this moist and sandy area. Driveways, sidewalks, and patios all require mold removal and cleaning every few years.  What you see in the picture above is the black mold and dirt being blasted away from the slab which now looks much, much brighter and cleaner.

We are promised rain tomorrow (90% chance), and that probably is a good thing.  Rick needs to rest his back, and I need time indoors to take care of keeping the inside of Gladys clean, too.  An those inside cleaning chores, as everyone knows, are never finished.