Saturday, May 22, 2010

Some people should never touch power tools. Ever.

Why do I say this? Because some idiot with a staple gun did this to our living room window:Since you can't really tell see the staples in question, here's a better look:


See all the brown spots? That's where the guy that rented our house before we bought it borrowed a staple gun from our neighbor and violated the beautiful wood work with well over a hundred staples to hold plastic sheeting and with a cardboard frame to the window to "winterize" the window. In some places there were clusters of up to 10 staples! And a lot of them only had one side of the staple in the wood, which is good for us, but makes me wonder what the point was in the first place. And this is not the only one he did it too...there are 5 other windows that he did it to and on 3 of them he not only did the inside, but also the OUTSIDE!

It took LOTS of work and patience, but I finally got the window to this condition, which is not great, but a HUGE improvement (and I tried like hell to get that bracket out, but the nails just wouldn't give so James is going to have to handle it)
To get the window to look that nice again it took a pair of needle nose pliers and a lot of cleaning. The cleaning part was because in my whole I-don't-care-what-the-house-looks-like-I-have-homework attitude towards housekeeping over the last 2 years, I did not clean the windows. Which was really, really, really stupid cause the 5 minutes I would've spent every month would have saved me the 2 hours with a shop vac, Murphy's Oil Soap, and glass cleaner.

Speaking of glass cleaner, this is the most awesome glass cleaner. Ever. And I'm being serious. Sprayway Glass Cleaner...it's in an aerosol can, sprays as a mist or foam (depending on how fast you move when spraying), it's super clingy & never runs, will remove ANYTHING from glass, the can lasts forever, and it's cheap (about $2!). And when I say it'll remove anything, I mean it removed dried, rock hard barbecue sauce from my glass cutting board in one swipe using it as foam!
Ok, back to the window. Here's the pile of staples I removed from the window, and there's way more than it look like there is. I counted a hundred before I lost interest in counting them, and there were still more!
This is probably going to get me in trouble with my hubby. It's a pile of rotting caulk that I accidentally removed from the bottom of the storm window with the shop vac. But in my defense, if it came out with a shop vac, and it was almost unrecognizable as being caulking, then it probably needed to go anyway. Right?

And in case you're wondering how we know that the renter borrowed a staple gun from one of our neighbors to do this, the neighbor told us! We were talking to him one day and I don't remember what brought it up, but the neighbor told us that the renter borrowed a staple gun one time, but didn't say what it was for. The neighbor had no idea that he used it to staple plastic to the window frames. And the people we bought the house from said that if the renter would've said something to them about the windows being drafty, they would've taken care of it for him, and it would not have involved staples!

So now that I have this taken care of, the window is ready for new glaze and caulk, and the frame and trim are ready to be refinished. I really didn't want to do it because I love the patina of the old varnish, but due to the high visibility of all the staple holes, it will have to be done. So that will be coming up soon!


***Edit:  I thought this was done with a power tool.  It wasn't.  It was a basic hand held staple gun.  So the title is totally wrong.  My bad.

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Need some help with exterior colors!!

We are officially getting back to work on the house!! The first big project is painting the exterior trim, and I have no idea what color to choose! Our house is kind of a off white or pale gray color and I'm lost as to what color to use on the trim. My husband pretty much said no to plain white, and would prefer gray. I have no idea what would look good, but I do know that I do not like the black seen around the windows in this picture. And we're not painting the house, just the trim since we will be putting new siding on in the next couple of years.

What color would you paint the trim of an all white house? Would you go bright, neutral, or dark? Would you also paint the gabel face a color that ties the trim to the rest of the house or just leave it white? Also, does any one know any links where I could look at pictures of white houses with color trim? I tried google and that was pretty much pointless...all that it showed were pure white houses with no color or pictures of white houses with black trim.