One Wall? Not Even

 
OK, remember that this is supposed to be the big project week at my house to parallel the project week we did at Marie's this spring. We have begun.

I would like to tell you we worked our butts off. We did work that hard for sure, but I'm sad to say that our actual butts are still amply in place. Sigh. Anyway...

This project was not on my list, but it got catapulted to the top by an unfortunate circumstance. This (mostly) block building is now called "the library," because it's stuffed with books. Seriously... a few other things, but mostly books.



The problem was that the logo of the organization we used to work for was painted on the side back when. I painted it out when our time with them came to an abrupt end. However, the coverage was fading, and you could read the logo again, and it HAD to go away. There's enough shade in this picture that you can't read it (I hope), but it could be seen from the road most of the time. What you can possibly see is that the door (the brown one in the building, not the leaning white one) is quite damaged. It had delaminated. I was planning to just screw some plywood over the lower part and paint it, along with that one side of the building.

However, when we took a look at the door (after scraping the loose paint on the frame, and the building eave), the core was all rotted around the window and full of bugs. Hmmm. Project expanded. So we headed for the Habitat for Humanity Restore. We came home with the white door.

Are you ready for this? It was only $10. OK, that was cheap even for them, and I'll tell you why. It's a steel clad door, but the steel was coming loose from the core along the top edge, and one bottom corner. I figured for an outbuilding that didn't have to look perfect, some pan head screws would solve that. The guy at the hardware store agreed.

Oh yeah, the other tiny problem was that it was an inch too short. So I got out my door stretcher. Meanwhile, Marie started painting the other end of the wall. Time- 2:30 pm.



4 pm- the door is hung, but not yet completely stretched. I was off to the store again for a few more parts and a new lockset. Marie kept painting.



Finally, I got that door all stretched out so it fit into the opening! (Am I talented or what?)

We gave up for the day at 5:30. We were just too pooped to finish today. Actually, we couldn't anyway, because the other problem was a yellowjacket nest behind that piece of old eave trough I wanted to remove. Had to wait till sunset when the bees are all home to spray it. That's now done. Hopefully we can now pull the gutter off without incident. I got stung once today when we discovered the nest.

Here's what's done for now.



I have to say that the whole project went quite smoothly. I wasn't happy when we decided we'd have to replace the door, because I don't want to spend all week on this non-choice project. We are just doing the one side.

We considered the neighbors' reactions: "Why on earth did they only paint one side of that building?"

Our response: We should post a sign on the front "Need $25 per side to finish. Put donations in the can. Come Saturday to paint."

Do you think it will work?

I just checked again. My too-large butt was not worked off

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