Terry Sprouse

Sunday was a day to continue work on our present fixer upper house.

The house had a leaky cooler on the roof when we bought it. I repaired the roof with E-LAS-TEK rubberized roof coating (for flat roofs like we have in Tucson), but I had not repaired the ceiling until Sunday It had been stained by the water from the roof.

(The picture dates are wrong. I didn’t update the camera last time I changed batteries.)

I scraped the old paint away above the bathtub. I used joint compound (“mud”) to patch the spot. After the mud dried, I brushed on “Kilz” to cover the stains and to prevent any future leaks from the roof to stain the ceiling. Later, I will paint it again with the white latex paint we are using for the bathroom.

Another project I worked on Saturday was to continue painting the house roof overhang. It could easily have been 50 years since some sections of the overhang were painted, other sections never had paint. The wood absorbs the paint like a sponge. The wood is so old that, in places, a it has a hair-like covering. Before painting, I scape off the hair (I give it a shave) with one of my “mud” spatulas. You could probably use a wire brush too, but it comes off pretty easy with the spatula.

I started off using the cheap $1.00 “throw-away” brushes that you can buy at Home Depot. They didn’t hold the paint too well, so now I am using a more expensive brush which is working a little better. The paint spreads a little easier.

Most people wouldn’t notice whether or not the overhang was painted. However, we want this house to last a long time, so the paint goes on.

As I mentioned in an earlier blog, my wife & I do the repairs on this house in fits and starts. Since we live in the house, we don’t have the the pressures to do it rapidly, like we did for our last fixer-upper house. (For more info, see my latest book “How to Turn Your Home into a Rental House, Instead of Selling It).

For that one, the “Planeta” house, we worked late into the evenings and we would take turns getting up early the next morning, to put a few hours in before going to work. One of us would stay home with the sleeping kids. Making the monthly mortgage payments and all the repair costs that we were racking up, gave us real motivation to finish and get a renter in there ASAP.

In the present situation, it works best for me when I set easy short-range goals. Right now my goal is simply to get up early & paint for one hour before I eat breakfast and get ready for work. On weekends I can do more, but just an hour a day keeps the ball rolling.

Subscribe in a reader

Share this: del.icio.us | Digg | Ma.gnolia | Reddit | Stumble Upon |