House in Progress Diary

Spring Maintenance

Each time the season changes, we have to learn how to maintain the house...which is quite different than restoring it. Maintaining is done year after year. It is the necessary investment in time that you make to protect your financial investment in the house.

Sunday, we worked on the exterior...weeding, patching gutters, inspecting the roof, taking off the storm windows and putting up the screens (hooray!) We also hauled a lot of stuff out of here for disposal.

Our house currently has 37 windows. Yup. It should have 40, but three are covered up.

We found out on Sunday that we had CLOSE to this many screens in the basement, but not all of the screens are from THIS house. Because they didn't fit the windows. In the end, we had 14 screens. Hmmm. That leaves 13 windows without screens. Ooooookayyyyy.....

How do you quickly know if a screen and window fit together? (Or a storm window and window, for that matter.)

Numbered tacks. We love 'em. Someone in the distant past thought to use them and they are such a help. Because it is rare to find two windows in our old house that are exactly the same size.

An Aaron's-eye view of working on storms and screens. This would make me dizzy. I learned as a climber long ago...don't look down!

This is one of my favorite rows of windows...the windows in the dining room. They will really be beautiful someday...they are beautiful now even though some of the wooden frames need to be repaired. (We'll cover that later.)

Meanwhile, it was chop! Chop! Chop! And haul....weeding. Sorting. Tossing. Cleaning.

Then, a well deserved glass of red wine while reading Fine Homebuilding in the backyard on a warm Spring evening. WOW! We own a backyard! What a crazy thing...

Posted by jeanne on April 19, 2004 at 10:13 AM