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The Continuing Story of the Screen and Storm Windows

With winter fast approaching, mom and I took advantage of the mild temperatures on Wednesday to do a staining project we have put off since… oh, April? Wow. We’re really good at procrastination. These are the frames for the screen and storm windows for the small, square (-ish) windows in the living room, on the landing, the upstairs bathroom, and all three closets. Seven windows in all, with a screen and a storm for each makes fourteen frames. And the trim that goes with them.

We put in three solid hours, and I’m convinced we’ll need a second coat of stain because the pine is so thirsty. Mom disagrees. I think she’s just anxious to get them done. We ran out of daylight, plus we were tired, so the second coat and the poly finish will have to be done another day. It’ll have to be outside again, though, because I got a wicked headache from the smell. I can’t imagine doing this in the basement with just the windows open. I seem to mind this stuff more lately. I guess the fall allergies don’t help, either.

We did our best to keep Oliver out of the staining process, but I’m sure there a few golden retriever hairs in there somewhere. As you can see in the top picture, he was close by for the whole project.
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Sawhorses, Oliver and the Figure Eight

I got the final coat of color stain on this basement screen door yesterday. I’m ready to be done with this project, but we have to put a finish coat of some sort on it yet. Guess I’d better see what we have on the paint shelf in the basement.
Oliver wasn’t paying much attention to me and my project, so I got started. Don’t you know, as soon as I had stain slathered over half the door, here comes Oli, sniffing, wagging, shedding, and weaving his rope between the legs of the sawhorses. There was a tense couple of minutes where I had to tell him to sit and stay, because he had made a figure eight around the legs. He really couldn’t go anywhere, and he refuses to unwrap himself by going back the way he came. After I finished the final wipe down and got my gloves off, I was able to lift the sawhorses and free his rope. Then I asked him to please sit on the glider while the door dried, so we don’t get golden retriever hair in the wet stain (we did anyway) or get get white stain in his hair (he did anyway).

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Basement Screen Door

We hauled the sawhorses out to the front porch again last week.
Mom and I got busy staining the new screen door for the basement. This one is pretty basic. Bill built it because the basement’s back door is pretty low, under six feet I believe.

The door frame is painted, but we chose to do a white stain on the door, for two reasons. One, I already had the can of stain, and two, because I don’t want to have to repaint it every couple of years.

So we started out by giving it a wipe down with tackcloth, since it has been sitting around for about a month. We got two coats on each side before it was time to call it a day. I think it needs one more, then we can put some kind of clear coat on the door, call Bill and tell him it is ready. Bill is going to put the screens in and he also bought a metal mesh grill for the bottom section, because he knows what doggie noses can do to a screen.

As an added bonus, the modern screen door tension bar thingy and the modern hinges that came with the new front door’s screen door/storm door will be just fine for the basement.