Doing Some House Work

So....

Adam finished staining the house on Thursday last, and then took off for a week in Peru. I looked around and decided I'd start work on the deck. First I started cleaning all the old bird seed from between the boards using a spackling knife then the air compressor. (This after Adam had hit it pretty good with the pressure washer!) That took much of Friday, Saturday and Sunday. (Okay, not much much of Saturday or Sunday because....FOOTBALL!)

Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday I hauled out the extension ladder and started on the outside of the deck staining the stiles and rails. There are a boatload of them! More than 100 stiles with top and bottom rails. Each 1-1/2" x 1-1/2" x 22" stile presents three surfaces to be stained when viewed from the outside. And, since the stiles are screwed on the outside that leaves a small--about 4" wide--pocket between each. And that needs to be stained, too. Very time consuming. Lots of up-and-down on the ladder, too. Good exercise for the knees and thighs!

Thursday and Friday I finished up those stiles I couldn't get because the ladder was in the way and started on the inside where I only had those two rails (top and bottom) and the one surface of the stiles to do. Still, there are well over 100 of them on the 10' x 36' deck and the 8' x 16' covered porch. While I had very limited need for the use of a ladder (just three posts on the covered porch), everything was below the waist so there was a lot of bending over and/or squating. Good exercise for the back and thighs!

Thursday afternoon I was working on the east end of the deck. The sun was shining directly into my eyes and its reflection off the house windows was getting me from the other side. I had to ask Terry to come out and be my portable shade umbrella just so I could see where I was supposed to be putting the stain. I haven't looked closely, but I think I got it where I wanted it.

Any way, I finished all the hard stuff this afternoon around 2 PM. Tomorrow, I'll get to work on the deck itself. I also used up 1-1/4 gallons of stain, so I went and got two more gallons this afternoon just to be safe. If I have extra, it does call for two coats--or there's the front of the shed.

When Adam does return, he won't have too much to do! (Except stain the front door porch, fix the electrical outlets on the deck (they have never worked properly) and touch up a half dozen log ends he missed because they are hiding behind a downspout.)

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I mentioned that Terry and I purchased new iPhone 6ses last week. They arrived today. One delivered via UPS and the other via FedEx. From different directions.

Now we have to figure out how to transfer our data/settings from our iPhone 5s to the new phones. I've backed up to the Cloud several times and so has Terry. Maybe tomorrow I'll get around to doing the transfers.