Well….after three hours or so of work, I got the bathroom trim sanded and painted this morning and it looks okay…with how bad the trim looked, I am happy with how it came out and I like going back to  the original white that was in the house years ago…not sure if the look is modern or not but it has that classic cottage look that I was going for…and it looked like they didn’t even clean the trim at all before they sloppily painted it, leaving all kinds of crap in the paint and runs everywhere…not sure if I got them all but with the eggshell finish on the paint I’ve been using, it hides a lot of flaws…and gets me back to the “good enough” standard that I have been using once I started on this place and realized I wasn’t going to do the work necessary for it to be perfect…still have a few detail things to do where I was cleaning the paint that oozed under the painters tape and took paint off the trim, too…but I’ll wait a while for that…I need to rest my right hand, elbow, and shoulder since they are really hurting right now and doing the window will abuse them some more…so, now I’m going to look for a topic and read some news and will be back shortly….more later…

Well…after trying to not talk all the time about working on this house, I give up…it’s about all I do anymore so if I don’t talk about it, I won’t talk about anything at all and that just isn’t going to happen…so, here goes….I did finally get on the trim in the bathroom this morning and got a bunch of the old paint sanded and removed so the finish will be much better when I paint but I still need to do some filling first but that won’t happen today…my thumb is howling at me after using the sander this morning and I need to rest it or take something for it and I’m not sure which I want to do….we’ll see….one thing I did discover after starting on the heat register from the big bedroom is that heavy duty oven cleaner works better than strip on both the frame and grates and I only have one more application to do on the grate and it will be almost completely paint free…the frame is already ready for sanding and painting after two applications and the paint just slid off with a copper pan scrubber…and this spray on oven cleaner is so much easier to use on the grates to get into every corner than trying to brush on strip…will do one more application on the grate tomorrow and then the rest will come off with the heat gun…and that only leaves three to do but won’t get working on those until summer where I can spray them outdoors and won’t have to eat the fumes…but, I am done for the day now unless I get to doing the filling in the bathroom….it does feel good to make progress but I did remember to tell myself I’m not on any schedule and just hope to have the bathroom done by the end of April and then on to the big bedroom that should take about 6 weeks to finish once I start in there…and then I’m taking all of July off…running out of time to enjoy myself as I get older and don’t want to waste the time I have left making a really nice house for the next owners…but, you’ve heard me say that before…still applies….

Well…had lots of stuff to do today and got everything done so I feel okay about that…even got the heat gun from HF this morning and used it to strip the paint off one register as soon as I got back here with it…took a long time but this register had at least 5 coats of paint on it and maybe more…and even holding the heat gun on one spot for minutes didn’t really get the paint to bubble much but it softened it enough use the wire brush to break it up…it looked like the paint was acting as insulation it was so thick…over an eighth of an inch thick in spots and I almost used up a wire brush doing one register..but, I had gotten quotes of 25 bucks each to strip or sand blast them so I guess I’m still saving cash…and I did find save a lot and got 10 pounds of chicken leg quarters for 3.90 so I’ll have food for weeks and weeks…and I was looked on as a freak with masking up again today but I don’t give a damn…they will look different when they are getting sick from omicron2 and I’m not….needless to say, with all of the register work, I didn’t get on the trim in the bathroom but I will work on that tomorrow…I’m done for the day….

Well…it has been quite a busy day today with the two bike rides and I even got some work done in the bathroom, too….got all of the trim masked off to start working on getting it ready to paint…and that meant sanding about 8 feet of the baseboard and then doing all of the filling on that section since it had huge flaws in it from painting over the paint that was chipped off in places….but, I’m not sure if sanding is going to do it for the trim around the back of the toilet with how crappy the paint job is and how much plaster and filler it has all over…so, I may wait til I get the heat gun and peel off a bunch of it instead but we’ll see, once I get started on a job, I don’t like to wait for anything so I’ll probably try to wedge myself in there and try to get the sander on it and see how it comes out…I am sore from just the two hours I spent on it today with how I had to contort myself to get into the small places….will be back at it tomorrow…maybe, I do have to wash the car in the morning after the grocery run so the work may wait a bit….

Well…just couldn’t get started til late today and only got a little work done in the bathroom…I did take the register out and tried to strip it and it didn’t work at all so I tried to use my propane torch to burn the paint off and but my old torch just doesn’t make a good enough flame…just a huge orange one comes out of it and cuts off all the time so I think I’ll buy a new one this week…even took the whole thing apart to try to figure out what is wrong and didn’t see anything so I gave up…I really should have a working torch with owning a house and having to do soldering every once in a while….and they are only about 20 bucks including a tank of gas so that’s not bad…I did get started on the baseboards and will probably finish the filling on them tomorrow which means I can paint later in the week…then it’s on to the window as I let the paint cure this time before masking the baseboards to do the wall paint….and that will take 3 weeks or so and that will give me time to start on the door and door frame along with putting the new hinges on the door…and I can get the walls ready to paint while I wait for the baseboard paint to cure, too but that should only take a day or so…but I’m done now…just worn out today and need to take it easy for a while….

Well…yeah, not a lot of politics today but I did get to taking the hinge back off the bathroom door and soaking it in the new strip that I got the other day….but, it looks like 10 bucks down the drain since I coated the hinge in the strip and let it sit for an hour and it still didn’t strip the hinge clean at all…so, it looks like new hinges are in order and I can get the 3 sets I need for about 16 bucks so that’s not a bad deal…but now I need to figure out how to strip the heat registers since they have the same paint that wouldn’t come off the hinges…I may have to have them sand blasted or commercially stripped and that won’t be cheap but I do want to save them…I guess I’ll need to wait to work on them until it’s warm enough to do it outside since the strip is flammable and you shouldn’t use it inside….I do have a whole can that needs to be used and a can and a half of the 40 year old stuff so I may be able to at least get some of the paint off before I try to figure out how to get them to the point I can paint them black…oh, well….

Well…finally…my kitchen is done…just got the range hood and installed it and that was the last piece of the puzzle….man, two months of work to take it from the gross, dirty thing it was to a clean, usable kitchen that I am not ashamed of anymore…and I know I shouldn’t be ashamed since I didn’t let it get to the state it was in when I bought this place but taking a year to get to working on it and finishing it is on me….it does feel good to have a room I can be proud of and now I know my color scheme of using the grey for the walls and white for the trim was the right one…it just looks so clean and i hope that the next darker shade of grey will look good in the dining room…not sure what color I’m going to use in the bathroom yet but I wonder if white walls with grey trim would look cool? It would sure brighten it up in there replacing the dark blue that is in there now but we’ll see…now I am taking a week off to just live for a bit and heal my aches and pains…now have I earned a cocktail? Yeah, probably not but it would be nice to do a Star Trek night with the latest season of “Picard” starting today and there is an episode of “Discovery” to watch too…I need some rest….

Well…damn, I am sore after working on the kitchen and getting so close to finishing it…I even went back to repaint the trim pieces that the tape had pulled the paint from and then put all of the new outlet plates on and they look pretty cool in shiny black…and I made sure all of the switches and outlets were straight since they were so crooked before they looked like hell…and all that work leads me to the question of the day: have I earned a cocktail or two? It’s been almost two months of being good and I really like that but I feel like I can use a reward for the two months of work that I did on the kitchen…going from the gross, dirty mess that it was to the clean, semi-modern look that it has now…I know there are lots of detractors who deride any use of greys since they are pretty overdone and now out of style according to them but I like the way it looks and that is the only thing that counts…and the new black range hood is supposed to be here tomorrow….yeah, right…and that will finish what I’m going to do to the kitchen…for now…so, do I or don’t I? Hmmmm….I guess we’ll see later…maybe just one with Star Trek? I do know that I have gone out to the kitchen to just look at it a couple of times….and even with the crazy crooked cut lines, I can live with it….

Well…damn, this was a long time coming..I finally have the walls painted in the kitchen…2 coats and they look pretty good..I like the color and how it looks but there is not a straight line in any corner and that kind of looks like hell but there is nothing I can do about that without chopping out every corner and replastering it and that just isn’t going to happen….and the painter’s tape pulled off a lot of the white on the trim so I’ll need to touch that stuff up but that is going to wait a while until the pain is out of my hands and it really isn’t a big job so I can do that as time goes on…the rest of the house isn’t going to have that problem with much less masking that has to be done…so, I’m done for the day…5 hours is enough for one day….and I haven’t had lunch yet so I guess I’ll go with one meal today since I want to read the news first and that will take an hour or so…the kitchen does look completely different and I have to stop being my own harshest critic…I think I did the best that could be done without tearing out walls and starting from scratch….and over time I’ll stop noticing the flaws and just enjoy my kitchen again…might take a while….more later….

Well…it’s finally official…I am damn tired of working on this house….spent the whole afternoon masking off the trim in the kitchen to get ready to paint the grey tomorrow and some of the white paint is already being pulled off the trim just re-positioning the tape as I was putting it on….and I had cleaned everything with tsp and scrubbed everywhere there was grease from cooking but I guess that wasn’t enough…so there will be lots of touch up on the trim Thursday and Friday…I never really expected to have a new looking house interior when I started on it…if I wanted that, I would have stripped the trim and re-finished the oak but that was way more work than I was ever going to do….I am just tired of working, working, working….and I think I’ve gotten to the point that I just need a rest and however the kitchen turns out it’s good enough for me….okay, that’s enough whining…there is not one straight line in all of the seams that I taped off today….have to keep reminding myself that this is an old house and the next people will make it look new….I need some time off….