2 months later

We've been slow on house progress because of the birth of a new baby, but we're back at it and it's time to really get things going.

Goldflame honeysuckle

It's been interesting to see all the plants coming up in the yard and the old landscaping around the pool and front of the house. So far we've been greeted by unexpected flowers from several types of daffodils, a large dogwood tree, a few different colors of azaleas, President Grevy French lilacs, lilies of the valley, and these lovely goldflame honeysuckles. Hostas and liriope are popping up in places that were previously covered with ivy and creeper vines, remnants of some long past garden. Keeping the lawn in check has been a large task, since we are dealing with many years of overgrowth in several places, and patches of Japanese knotweed grow so quickly, we find a foot or two of new growth after not having visited the house for a week.

Mostly, we've been spending our time cleaning trash out of the house, so we haven't done anything that feels like real progress. I have started to strip paint from the old molding, but it's proving to be an impossible task, and I think I'm going to have to take a different approach. It seems that there are layers of both water- and oil-based paints, which is probably contributing to the peeling of the paint now, but also makes paint stripping a very arduous task. I've evaluated the situation and will be starting a different approach soon- most likely scraping, sanding, spraying deglosser, priming, and painting again.

One thing in the house that actually did take well to the paint stripper was the back of the front door. It had about 4 coats of paint and several different colors of stain underneath, but it's the original 1912 door and I wanted to save it. The paint was in terrible condition, so I'd rather strip it than repaint it.

Full door

Ewwww. I didn't even like touching it, honestly.

Seriously, it was disgusting. It took three days and many applications of paint stripper, two different sized metal scrapers, two different wire brushes, tons of rags, a scrubby sponge, and about a third of the skin off my hands, but I got it done.

After day 1

Day 2- another coat of paint stripper applied. I forgot paper towels so I'm using old wallpaper and paneling as my drop cloth here.

Almost done! Just needs sanded and sealed.