Will the Dust Ever Settle?

We're stripping and sanding up a storm......a dust storm. Every day I sweep up large piles of hardened paint chips and wood dust.

Today R sanded the wood trim around the opening that leads into the dining room from the foyer. While he sanded, I drove to Home Depot for more sandpaper.

When I returned home, I retrieved the Silent Paint Remover from the pile of tools in the game room. It had been awhile since I used it last. I find it is only useful when working on horizontal projects such as the exterior French doors that we purchased just before Christmas.I stripped one side of one door today. Since I was slightly bent over while I was scraping I now have a sore back. I have decided this is a project that I will need to work on for an hour a day until both exterior French doors and the matching wood storm doors are completely stripped.

I moved on to finishing the small doors that are on the cabinets in the living room. R re installed the doors once I finished stripping and sanding them.

The photo below shows the cabinet doors before the hinges were installed. You can see where we removed the wood shelves. We are installing glass shelves because the wood shelves were warped and cracked. The shelves were also not evenly spaced and did not match the shelves on the other side of the room.
Tomorrow we move on to the kitchen door that is in the main hallway. It is currently a Dutch style door that we will replace with another French door. I don't believe this Dutch door is original to this location because the door jamb looks like it was reworked. Also the door handle is too close to the edge of the door. When you close the door your knuckles hit the door jamb. I believe the door is original to the house but just not in this location. My best guess is that when they enlarged the kitchen it was removed from it's original location and installed here. We will use the Dutch door elsewhere. Where I do not have a clue but we will find a place for it.

The main hallway also needs another French door installed at the opening to the game room. You can see the witness marks of where the door hinges from a long ago removed door were located. They also left the door stop so it's just a matter of hanging another door. We purchased replacement French doors several years ago. But I still need to find door handles to match all our other doors.

The guest powder room is also off this hallway. The door has already been stripped so essentially it's a repeat of what we did to the 2 closets and basement door.

Our plan is to get this hallway stripped and sanded before all the snow melts. Once the snow melts we need to go back outside to pick up all the piles of logs and branches from the two trees we cut down several weeks ago. R also needs to cut up the two big tree trunks from the trees we had cut down last spring. His old chainsaw was not big enough to cut through the large trunks. His new chainsaw should do the job nicely. It will be nice to get outside again but I have a hunch that winter is not over just yet.

A friend asked me "when are you going to paint?" Our plan is to strip and sand the trim and do all the plaster repair on the first floor before we do any painting. The floor plan is too open to try and contain any dust that is generated from sanding. So that is why you haven't seen any painting.

I guess I will have to wait until tomorrow to tell you how we made the replacement pieces for the bevel glass French door. I am about ready to fall asleep on my keyboard. Night.

The Holy Grail of paint removal

Lately all I do is strip. Not that kind of strip....geeeeees. You know paint stripping. I strip strip strip and all I have to show for it is a very sore shoulder and a pile of paint chips. So I bit the bullet and bought a Silent Paint Remover. The only saving grace was that I bought it on eBay for $400.00. Had I known that I needed one I would have bought one in the winter when I could have gotten one for about $350.00.

Here it is in all it's glory. The Holy Grail of paint removing...The Silent Paint Remover.

I was leaving for work when it arrived, but from what I can tell it looks like it's hardly been used. I'll try it tomorrow if it doesn't rain.

I was reading the house blog Ocean Manor House. He made his own infrared remover. Very clever. If we decide that we need a second unit, it might be advantageous for us to build one. But for now....I needed one like last week.

The nectarine trees were planted today. A variety called Fantasia. I also trimmed all the fruit trees today. Only one looks iffy. But I'm not jumping the gun. It could just be that the early warm weather we had followed by the single digit cold snap might have damaged the buds. I can replace it in the fall with another peach tree. All the rest looked good and several smelled wonderful.

I also trimmed all the climbing rosebushes. Lots of dead canes but also a lot of new growth. Only one bush looked bad and again I am not going to panic just yet. I could see that most of the bushes had frost damage to the new growth.

My nearly black tulips are at their peak right now. In just the right light, they do look black.

I really need to get my landscaping rocks down before the weeds start to grow. But then I need to strip, mow, paint, got to work, make more shutters, hang shingles, and fertile the lawn and put down grub control. I wonder if I can get that all done this weekend????? this summer??? this year???