Pots and Paint

A couple of rainy days at the beginning of this week gave us a chance to have a little down time, so we used the time to let sore muscles heal and to do a little shopping.

We went into Tampa on Tuesday to go to Ikea and to The Container Store.  We bought a few things for Easter that we packed up and sent to Wisconsin. We added those items to the other "goodies" that we had which will let our daughters know what really happened to the Easter Bunny.  We also bought a few little items for Gladys to bring some more color into our lives.

Bright flowers fill my colorful vases in
the Florida Room.

One of the things that we bought was flowers for my little vases in the Florida Room.  We also bought some greenery and bright flower pots to add to the color scheme in the otherwise light blue and white room.  I like the room now.  It is bright, clean, and uncluttered.  It's even better now that we were able to move the remaining paint cans out to the garage.

A little greenery in colorful pots enjoy the sunshine
on the shelves on the southern side of the room.

Yesterday I started the day by vacuuming, scrubbing, and drying all of the floors in the house.  While that may not seem like a task, it is.  Getting all of the floors back to a grit-free, clean condition took me almost three hours and a full morning's supply of energy.

While I was doing that, Rick took a trip down to the Social Security office to arrange tax deductions when he starts to collect Social Security this summer.  We have made an adjustment in the past couple of years since our bi-monthly paychecks were replaced with retirement income coming in once a month.  Once he starts Social Security, he will get his retirement check at the beginning of the month and the Social Security check the fourth Wednesday of the month.  OK, time to adjust the budget again.  The good news is that we will get a slight raise this year, so we will have income to cover our plans for a different car.

Yesterday we worked on getting the front soffits ready for paint.  Rick spent time removing the rest of the old caulk that had pulled away from the vents and patching the soffits and fascia. By the afternoon, he was able to put on the primer coat which greatly changed the look of the soffits.

Today he started by completing the primer coat on the soffits. I worked on the back window sills, so we were able to complete two painting tasks at the same time.

While our initial painting dried, Rick moved on to blasting off the paint on the north side of the house. The paint on the upper part of the house peeled away like the shell from a hard-boiler egg.  As we got to the lower part of the wall, we had to be careful because of the electrical boxes and vents that belonged to the HVAC system and our clothes dryer.  We covered as much as we could with tarps to protect the HVAC system and also to keep the chipped paint from flying into the neighbor's back yard.

The north side of the house awaits a bit more work, lots of
patching, and a seal coat to make it water-tight.

The north wall is just as high as the south wall, so Rick once again was on the tall ladder.  We have some serious cracks to patch on the upper part of the wall, and we have some major patching work to do around the window on this wall.  Neither of us are sorry that we are taking the paint back to the basic plaster structure.  Doing so allows us to see what needs repair, and we know that we have the materials and the skills to make Gladys water-tight and secure again.  Do we want to do this work?  No, but we have no choice.  We will do it once, and we will do it right.  That will save us repair costs in the future.

Each day we accomplish a bit more and move a little closer to our goal.  We have about five more weeks to complete the painting of the house and soffits.  If we keep going at this rate, we should have Gladys secure before we go north for the summer.