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.

Weather Woes

Our progress has been somewhat stifled by unseasonably wet and cold weather.  However, I should not complain because the upper Midwest and the upper East Coast both are seeing snow yet which is almost unheard of this time of year.  Lindsay said that Green Bay got a couple of inches of snow; while that is not unheard of, the unusual part is that the cold temperatures did not warm, so the snow did not melt the same day.  Snow in April usually is short-lived, but this year everyone is witnessing crazy weather patterns that we all pray will not become the new normal.

We had a good day on Monday with highs in the 80s.  Rick finished patching the north side soffits and fascia, and then we moved indoors to work on the leaky window in the garage.  When the window was put in, the installers slathered on a thick coat of plaster on the inside.  All of that plaster, due to water seepage, pulled away from the whole inside of the window.  Because it came out so easily, we were fortunate to be left with a fairly smooth original window opening.  However, the wooden supports on each side of the window showed, so we knew that we would have to take steps to seal and to cover the rough edges.

Rick chips off the last of the loose plaster around the window.

Our first step was to clean out all of the loose plaster and to smooth the area.  Rick then squirted in some Great Stuff to seal the cavity around the window.  He always tends to overdo the Great Stuff, so we both spent some clean-up time getting rid of the oozing, excess Great Stuff.  Rick then climbed the ladder a little higher to discover that the leak in the wall was due to the HVAC pipes and wires that were coming into the house.  Those pipes and wires are supposedly protected by a galvanized cover outside, but the rain still seeps in and gets into the garage wall.  We are going to have to caulk the edges of the covering to keep the water out.

Great Stuff will keep the cold and bugs out, but we still have
to plug the leak in the wall to keep water away from the window.

On Monday, we called in Art, the arborist for the city, to look at our trees and to offer us some suggestions.  The good news is that the live oak on our property is healthy and in very good condition.  Art suggested that we just put in posts as close as we can to the tree when we build our fence, and then cut out the panels to follow the contour of the tree with temporary supports on those sections.  With temporary supports, we can move and adjust those sections as the tree continues to grow.

Art told us that the bottle brush tree in our front yard was dying, and that we should have it removed.  He suggested replacing it with a live oak -- which is NOT going to happen because I do not want to rake up leaves from the front yard forever -- or with a Florida elm.  I have not had a chance to check out how messy a Florida elm might be, so our decision on that is pending.  He also suggested a rigid bottle brush tree for elsewhere in the yard, and perhaps a palm or two near the street.

The bad news from Art was that the large palm in our front yard was too close to the house (which we knew), and that it was unstable in a storm.  OK.  That one will have to go because I do not want it falling on the house some day.  He suggested a smaller palm in its place, but we are hesitant to do that since a smaller palm there would block our view from the kitchen.  We might just use some smaller, flowering shrubs in that area to hide the plumbing fixtures and clean-out drains.  Why the builders could not have put those connections on the side of the house is beyond me, but we will deal with them as is.  What choice do we have?  Some shrubs, bushes, and perennials will solve our problem once we have the time and the money to plant them.  Maybe next year...

Art also suggested a Florida elm for the middle of our backyard, and he thought that a weeping bottle brush tree would be appropriate for the area behind the guest room and south of the Florida room.  I would like to see a tree there, and Art said the location was sunny enough for the bottle brush to grow well there.  Those two suggestions are something that I would like to see happen when we come back in the fall.

We have reclaimed water in this neighborhood.  That means that for a very economical price, we can tap into the treated wastewater that the city offers for landscape irrigation.  For a little over $1800, we can have the city come out and install the necessary equipment for us to use the water for the next 20 years.  We would have to put in our own pipes and sprinkler heads for our yard, but doing so would allow us to automatically set up timers so our trees, vegetation, and grass would be watered year-round.  Homeowners who have irrigation systems have beautiful yards; the rest of us have sparse grass that turns brown for most of the summer months.  Right now yards are green --either with grass or weeds-- but that will change by the time July arrives.

Rick was really excited about the possibility of an irrigation system. I was not so sold on it, not only because of the labor and cost that it would entail, but also because neither of us has any idea how to properly set up such a system.  Research shows, however, that professional companies, for a small fee, will design a system for us.  Yesterday Dan, from the city's water department, came out to assess our reclaimed water hook-ups.  He found that the supply line to our property was plugged, but that we could have the system unplugged and a meter installed with little problems.  We are going forward with plans for using the reclaimed water when we return in the fall.  This is just one more thing that we will somehow work into our budget.

Yesterday delivered the promised rain that weather forecasters predicted. Dan had come out in the morning while the skies just threatened rain, but by noon they delivered with a couple of good downpours.  That gave Rick time to research which irrigation systems to use, and it gave his sore arms and back some much-needed recovery time.  We have been pushing to finish the house really hard, and it is starting to take its toll on our aging bodies.

Right now Rick just finished sanding the soffits and fascia on the north side of the house.  It was very cold (in the low 50s) when we went out this morning, so we waited a bit for the weather to warm up.  While he did the sanding outside, I slapped on some masonry sealer around the inside of the garage window.  We bought molding yesterday to frame the inside of that window.  Once the sealer dries and I can add a couple of coats of paint, we will be ready to complete the inside trim on that window.

Rick just went outside to start the prime coat of paint on the soffits, so I had better get out there to help hold the tall ladder.  If there  is one thing that we do not need, it is for either of us to be injured.

Rain is predicted both for tomorrow and for Friday, so we will have to see what we can accomplish in the time that we have left to work outside.  This weekend is Easter, so maybe we can take a little time to connect with family members and to help them celebrate the holiday weekend.

"The Best Looking House on the Block"

When I look around Gladys and into the yards of some of our neighbors, I see what used to be in this neighborhood.  In the overgrown backyard of the house behind us, I see the kumquats drop from a tree and rot.  At one time, perhaps the homeowner planted that tree so he could have preserves and other kumquat delicacies.  An abandoned clothes line pole awaits a mate across the yard so fresh lines can once again hold laundry.  Before the time of dryers, that must have been the standard way of drying laundry in the early 1960s.  A broken and forlorn stack of rocks that formed a waterfall stands buried amidst plants and ferns in the back yard of the neighbor to our north.  Closer examination shows the outline of a large pond that at one time gurgled with a relaxing sound.  Too bad all of that has been left to the elements or to neglect. This neighborhood was a showcase at one time, and I am happy that many of the neighbors have taken steps to keep their homes neat, landscaped, and in good repair.  We are working hard to make sure that Gladys does not again fall into the realm of disrepair.

Our goal yesterday was to patch the cracks we discovered in the north wall and to get a good coat of masonry sealer on the wall.  The stubborn areas of paint that would not come off yielded little way when I attacked them with a scraper.  Meanwhile, Rick was high on the ladder patching the numerous cracks that he found in the upper part of the wall which is backed by the wooden trusses rather than concrete block.

Rick adds a coat of tinted masonry sealer to
the north wall.

On this particular wall, we found numerous tiny cracks.  Rick figured that at one point in Gladys' life, this wall was scraped and repainted below.  Those areas that would not come off this time show evidence of that work.  A masonry wall takes a minimum of 28 days to cure, and Rick's guess is that this particular wall, since it faces north, did not get the sunlight or time it needed to fully cure before paint was added.  That could account for the rough shape it was in when we removed most of the paint.

Gladys before we added the bedroom and kitchen shutters...
 

and Gladys after the shutters adorn her front windows.

While the patching and the masonry sealer was left to dry, Rick moved on to finishing the soffits at the front of the house.  We were eager to get them done so we could hang shutters.  Shutters add so much to a house, so putting them on the front windows was a huge step toward adding some curb appeal to Gladys.  Before evening fell, we had added those shutters to the north bedroom wall and to the kitchen windows in front.  (Note to anyone who is interested: although not bad, we discovered that masonry window openings are not perfectly square!)

Now everyone will have Gladys' number!

The crowning touch to our efforts was the addition of the Michael Healy address plaque for which we waited five long weeks.  The plaque is brass and heavy; thankfully, the green background that we ordered turned out to match the green shutters and doors even better than we had hoped it would.  We are pleased with the results.  I cannot wait until next year when I can add some flowers and bushes to further enhance this house's curb appeal.

The completed front of Gladys just needs a few flowers
(and a paver sidewalk) next year to complete our vision.

Last night we went for a short drive, and Rick took a peek at the house on Victoria Lane.  Huge cement trucks were pouring concrete into the insides of the block foundation walls while other large equipment stood ready to backfill those walls with dirt.  That is certainly not the way something would be built in the north (where we love our basements!), but this is Florida, and the house is in a prime flood zone.  We both suspect that the house will be raised and surrounded on all sides by huge verandas that will give the homeowners both a shady place to sit and marvelous views of St. Joseph's Sound.  We can't wait to see what will be built there, but we probably won't see much before we leave for Wisconsin.  Seeing the house on Victoria Lane will be something we can look forward to when we return.

Today was spent adding two coats of paint to the north wall of the house, and then running around getting downspout extensions in anticipation of the rains coming next week.  While we were both painting the north side this morning, our neighbor Barbie (yes, she even LOOKS like a 60-something Barbie!) came over.  She is a very nice woman, and she came to tell us that we had "the best looking house on the whole block."  She asked us what the grey stuff was that we sprayed on the house.  We explained to her that what we were spraying was water, and the grey that she saw from across the street was the bare stucco that covers the house's concrete masonry blocks after we had blasted off the paint. She was surprised, so we explained why we took Gladys' walls back to the basic structure.

The paint on the north wall makes Gladys appear to be all one
color when someone sees her from the street. 

Barbie said she really liked the color and what the shutters did to dress up the house.  While I don't know if we have the best looking house, I can agree that we probably have the cleanest and most newly painted house.  Seeing something new that looks good always adds to the overall appeal of the property.  All in all, her comments were very appreciated.

And so our work continues. Shutters and a house number may not seem like much, but in my mind, they are transformative enough to show anyone who passes by that Gladys is not just a somewhat old and neglected house,  but truly a work of love as she becomes our home.

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.

Finishes and Fun

Springtime awarded us today with another gorgeous day-- the type of day were the warm breezes, bright sunlight, and high 70s temperatures just begged one to get outside.  We took advantage of the day by accomplishing some tasks and by enjoying ourselves outdoors.

Rick works on the sealer coat on the bedroom wall.

Naturally, this great weather will not last.  Rick worked to the point of dropping yesterday just to get a sealer coat of paint on the back guest bedroom wall.  We wanted to get that room sealed both because of our experience with the internal leaks and because rain is predicted for Monday afternoon and all day Tuesday.  While he worked on that, I finished scraping the soffits and fascia across the front of the house.  I must admit that I am very glad Gladys is not any larger than she is.  At a little over 1350 square feet, she is large enough inside to accommodate our needs and long enough outside that I would not want to scrape or paint any more.  If she were larger, that also would mean I would have more to keep clean inside.  Nope.  Gladys is just the right size.

The finish coat shows the true color as we dress us Gladys.

This morning I took a little time off to go to church while Rick put on the first finish coat on the bedroom wall.  Then he switched to the front of the house and filled in the bad spots on the soffit in preparation for paint.  He also removed the rest of the hurriedly-and-poorly-done caulk from a couple of years ago.  We had to get it sealed at the time; now we can remove it all and do it right so it looks as it should when visitors come to our front door.

After lunch today, Rick and I added the second coat of finish paint on the bedroom wall so that all that is left are the soffits and the window sills.  Thankfully, the soffits are flat and lower in the back, so we both can work on them and share the burden of that task.

Those chores were the work part of the weekend.  The fun part of the weekend started with Saturday morning when we went to Craig Park in Tarpon Springs for their annual Art Fair.  (Bonnie, this is the Art Fair that you attended with us a couple of years ago.)  As usual, the Fair was huge with a great variety of vendors.  We by-passed the $1,000+ double hanging hammocks and chairs and ventured on to original oils and metal sculptures.

The copper art sculpture adds the finishing touch to
our living room wall.

I wanted to add one small piece of original art to the living room wall to complete that room, and I knew what I had in mind.  After looking at a couple of copper art booths, I found exactly what I was looking for: an ibis wading through a marsh with lilly pads and cattails.  It was the perfect size, was very well-made, and was just slightly north of what I wanted to pay for it.  However, I knew that if I did not take it, I would certainly regret that decision.  So home it came.  I called the bird "Ichabod" as in Ichabod Crane of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," even though I know the bird is really an ibis and not a crane.  Rick just refers to it as "the goony bird on the wall."  Whatever it is called, I like it.

Meet our living room "goony bird."

On the way out of the Fair, we passed a booth selling tablecloths.  Although I had no plan to buy a cloth, I found one that we both really liked.  Had I been shopping for a tablecloth, I would have measured the table!  As it was, I mis-guessed the size, so the cloth is just slightly too large, but I would rather have that than one that is too small.  I have not washed it yet, so perhaps it will shrink a bit in the dryer.

Our new tablecloth for when guests dine with us.

Tonight the weather was so beautiful that we decided to treat ourselves to a picnic in Weaver Park.  A beautiful sunset and entertaining wildlife (including jumping fish in St. Joseph Sound) gave us plenty to watch as we dined.

On the way home, we took a detour down Victoria Lane.  For those of you who follow this blog, you know that Rick is fascinated with the mansion someone is building on Victoria Lane.  The progress on this house has been excruciatingly slow, but tonight we actually saw some results.  The batter-boards are up and the corner block walls are in place.  The house is supposed to be built in the turn-of-the-century style to fit the other 1890s - 1920s houses on the street, so we are excited to see exactly what the owner will build on the site.  Once again, stay tuned...

The stack of sand and cement blocks are the foundation
for another mansion on Victoria Lane.

Each day we accomplish something more on Gladys.  Our progress may not be setting speed records, but in the end we will get her painted and finished before we head north for the summer.  We have the north wall and three back walls left with six weeks to finish them all.  With perseverance, we will meet our goals and hopefully still have some time left to enjoy springtime in Florida.

Plans, Progress, Pools, and Pipes

Today has been an interesting day, filled with plans, progress, pools of water, and pipes.

First, the plans.  We have been waiting almost six weeks for our address plaque to arrive.  Finally, it did!  We are pleased with the results because the plaque is VERY heavy, is well-made, and the background is almost identical to the green on our front doors.  We cannot wait to put it up, but we must have patience because we still have to finish the soffits on the front of the house before we can add anything else to Gladys' "face."

Although fairly plain, this address plaque will finally let
everyone know Gladys' number.

Soffits were first on our agenda today.  While Rick put a second coat of paint on the north bedroom wall, I started to scrape the front soffits.  Not fun, and definitely too much work for me to do all in one day.  Actually, my doctor would have a coronary if he knew I was doing as much as I am, but I cannot sit around and watch Rick work all day either.

The soffits need a lot of scraping, patching,
and paint before they look good.

The front wall turned out well, but the soffits promise to be a lot of work.  We could not scrape soffits too close to the fresh paint, so at a certain point we ceased work on the front of the house and moved to the back.  Actually, we wanted to take the paint off the north side of the house next, but our neighbor was sitting in his back yard sanding paint off of an antique bench. (I know.  Removing paint from an antique is not a good idea, but to each his own.)   Since the wind was coming from the south, we were afraid that if we started to blow paint off the wall, we would be blowing both water and paint chips onto his newly sanded work.  Doing that would not make us good neighbors, so we moved on to the back of the house.

Rick worked too hard and too long, but by mid-afternoon he had as much paint as was going to come off removed from the guest bedroom wall and the south side of the Florida Room.  Rick came into the house through the garage, jumped into the shower, and left his wet clothes for me to deal with.  I have long preached the benefits of simplicity, and Gladys came through with a simple solution once again.

The paint came off, but it was slow-going, coming off
inch-by-inch.

Many of our belongings here came from our camper, and my non-electric clothes drying system is a part of our camping past.  The rack in the picture is one that we used to prop up in the tiny camper bathtub when drying clothes outside was impossible.  Rick's socks and jeans were soaked, so they had the opportunity to bask in the Florida sunshine.  Simple, free, and effective.  After his shower and a change of clothes, Rick came back outside to sit for a few moments in the back yard.

Sometimes, simple is best... and free!

Then I came into the house through the Florida Room, and my heart almost stopped.  A pool of water was seeping out from under the low cabinets on the south wall of the Florida Room, and a second stream of water came from the living room corner, past the palm tree, under the new couch, and onto my new rug!  Argh!!!  As Rick power-washed the walls, Gladys peed! One step forward, and two steps back.  I yelled for Rick to come in and help, and the two of us spent the next 45 minutes moving furniture, sopping up water with old towels, and flipping the rug so it would dry.  Rick put the AC up to remove moisture in the house, so now we are in the "drying out" stage.

Water seeps into the Florida Room from
a tiny opening in the concrete wall.

Since our house was in total disarray, Rick suggested fish and chips at our favorite restaurant next to the bike trail downtown.  While we have had wonderful meals there in the past, fish and chips are not their specialty.  The fish were greasy, tasteless, and definitely overpriced. I ordered a "half order" and received half the food.  That was fine (especially since it was not that good), but we were charged only two dollars less (rather than half price) for my entree.  I have had better fish from a fast-food restaurant, and the food was definitely more reasonably priced elsewhere.

Our new rug needs fans to help it dry.  Ugh!

However, we learned from the waiter, much to our delight, that Dunedin was holding a parade through downtown to kick off the annual Highland Games festival.  Dunedin, as the name implies, is a very Scottish town, and they are very proud of their heritage.  This year, for the first time, they decided to have a bagpipe band parade.  Bagpipers from New York, Georgia, and area communities all gathered to pipe and drum their way through our fair city.  We thoroughly enjoyed the whole spectacle of the parade even though it was not very long.

So we have had an interesting day.  Plans, progress, pools of water, and pipes.  Where else but in Florida would we experience this kind of life?

Layers of Paint and Leaks

Although sunshine is predicted for the next five days, we started this morning by reattaching two of the three rain gutter downspouts that we removed last week.  Anyone who knows Florida summer weather knows that when it rains in Florida, it RAINS.  Our roof line is constructed in such a way that we have a waterfall in front of our front door without rain gutters. The rain gutters are still in place, but without the downspouts, we would have a washout at the corners of the house if it really pours.

I also am not one to tempt fate.  If we kept the downspouts off, we would experience rain for sure.  This way, perhaps we can believe the weathermen and actually use the next few days of sunshine to make further progress on Gladys.

Rick begins removing the paint from the bedroom north side
of the house.

After the downspouts, Rick once again fired up the pressure washer to the bedroom north side.  We knew that some of the paint was loose, but we were both shocked to see the paint peel like a three-day old sunburn.  In other areas of the house, we had some larger chips fly off, but on this wall we watched the paint bubble up like a boil and come off in magazine-sized sheets.  With a little clean-up work around the edges tomorrow, we will be ready to seal the cracks in the wall and apply our sealer coat.

The paint came off very easily from this wall.  This is the
last wall on the front of the house.

While removing the paint, we got more water than we wanted to directed toward our front doors.  We both have said that the double front doors, if confronted with hurricane-driven rain, would leak like corroded plumbing.  The doors are rated to stop a projectile traveling at 130 mph, but as far as stopping moisture, we both had our doubts.

We doubt no more. We now are certain that Gladys will leak if the rain is driven toward the doors.  The double doors come together with one thin rubber membrane between them.  They are on a protected porch; unfortunately, the porch faces west which is where most hurricanes would enter the city.  When Rick first started spraying the area, I checked and the floor inside the doors was dry.  By the time he was finished with the pressure washer, the rug inside was wet and the water was seeping out into the hallway. We will try to make some adjustments with the sill plate; sadly, that will not give us much comfort if a hurricane has the city in its path.  Fortunately, the last time the area saw a hurricane was in 1921.  Locals caution, though, that we are now "due" for one to hit.

This winter has been unusually cold, so we have not been able to use our beach pass yet this year.  The temperatures finally were predicted to be above 80, so we took the afternoon off and went to Sand Key Beach.  After two hours with just our lower legs exposed to the sun (since the breeze kept us almost chilled), our knees and the top of our feet are sunburned while the rest of us is fine.  We still are better off than some of the people we saw who were so suntanned they looked like "before" poster children for skin cancer ads.  We know we should have gotten out of the sun sooner-- stupid us.  But at least we are smart enough to not continually expose our skin to more damage.

Overall, though, our beach experience was great.  We relaxed, watched people swim and parasail, and had time to read our Kindles.  At one point, we watched a persistent sea gull get into an unattended beach bag, wrestle out an unopened bag of potato chips, and peck at it until he was rewarded with a beakful of greasy goodies. The people returned before he could get more; that is probably good because had he eaten more, I am sure that he would be terribly sick (or dead) by this evening.

As the weather continues to get warmer, we will switch to summer hours: work from early in the morning until about 10:00 a.m.  After that, the temperatures generally make working outside too difficult.  After 6:00 p.m., the temperatures get back to a reasonable level for a little early evening work if need be.  That leaves us with the afternoons to shop, to enjoy the library, or to relax under our beach umbrella at the beach.  Springtime is great in Florida.

Bling

Every woman knows that at certain times in life, a little pampering and "bling" is necessary.  Poor old Gladys has undergone a tremendous amount of stress, strain, and battering in the past three years, all in the name of improvement. With much of the internal and unseen work completed, we are finally to the point where we can make more visible changes. As a woman's appearance is not complete until she adds complementary earrings (which compliment her total look), so Gladys is finally ready for her own first set of "earrings" to add a little style to her life. Her "bling" is not diamonds but rather shutters that have been absent from her face for many years.

We know that when she was originally built, she had some type of shutters.  Guessing from the old anchors and screws that we found in her, we think that when she was built, the contractor put up ornate iron-work shutters.  Some of the other homes on the block still display these 1960s-era wrought-iron scrolls as shutters.  Perhaps at one point they were exchanged for something more contemporary; by the time we purchased her in June 2011, the shutters were long gone.

Rick painted the final coat on the soffits and fascia of the bedroom wing this morning, so after a little drying time, we were ready to add the shutters.  After almost three weeks of drying, the shutters are still "tacky," so we are reserving judgement on how well this paint will actually adhere to the plastic shutters.  The manufacturer guaranteed that they were "ready to paint" with a good exterior latex paint. We will see...

At any rate, we think that a little bling is just what Gladys needed to up her curb appeal.  The before and after pictures say more than I ever could.

The finished front still looked bare...

until green shutters that match the front door add a little curb appeal.

We still need to finish the front of the house and to add shutters on the bedroom window by the front porch and on the kitchen windows.  Then the total look will be complete.  When we add a beautiful white fence next year and a few flowers and bushes, Gladys will just keep getting better.