The handle is gone! I really am not sure why it was there, but I managed to finally get enough of the paint off the four flat head screws to start working on them. Back in the dark ages, when I was a freshman at college, I had a guy from church admonish me about the necessity for a tool kit in my car. He bought me this black, flat case with all sorts of tools I still do not really understand. However, in it are two screwdrivers that have very short, thick GREEN handles. I have found that when you have a stubborn screw, those short handles make the job easier.
I worked and worked. I cursed and wept. I yelled and asked forgiveness. Seriously, I apologized to a door. I even said that I would not throw away the handle but look for a better use for it some place else. That latter bit of concession worked. The first screw moved the tiniest bit. Pressure. Wiggle. Switch. Pressure. Wiggle. Switch. A gazillion times of switching between the four screws later, the handle came off!
To me, the door really looks like a door now.
I started filling the bazillion holes in it and I filled the cracks where I could not snug the new wood against the existing frame. I am conflicted about the rest. By this I mean, the original work on the door did not include good coping at the horizontal panels. I want to not fill in those gaps. I want it to look as close to its original state as possible. If I paint down in those gaps, the wood will be protected. And there is a significant overhang of the roof, so the door rarely gets wet.
As far as the miter cuts go, apparently my putty skills are no where near the level of my drywall patching skills. I can float and tape with the best of them. I am also a fairly skilled caulker. Putty, well, it looks like a kindergarteners was working on the door. I am, at this point, hoping paint will cover a multitude of sins.
The back of the door has a strip of extra wood at the top and at the bottom. I suspect it was to brace a door that was falling apart, even though I cannot see any cracks or gaps there. I would like to take off the wood, but I am genuinely fearful the door will fall apart. I would like to take off the rather large pieces of wood and replace them with thinner ones. But I should probably just leave the door alone. It is only that I see those errant pieces of wood each and every time I pull into the garage that this thought came to mind. I suspect this is a let-sleeping-dogs-lie issue, but to me it is a Pandora's Box. Of course, you know how the latter turned out.
If you look up in the left hand corner, you will see a screw I was able to properly sink. However, there are far too many screws that no matter how hard I pressed, no matter how hard I backed them out and started again, no matter how much I moved them, I could not sink them flush. I know, though, that reality is that I will not be able to find me a man and a hammer drill. I know that I will be forced to live with my failure, with having it taunt me each and every time I go through the door.
[I am fairly sure no real craftsman would use wood filler that goes on purple and dries white, but I thought it was a genius move on the manufacturer's part.]
I am not sure I am up to painting. Actually, I am not sure if I have a paint brush left because I sacrificed one when I helped Sandra paint her deck and it might have been my last brush. But I believe I should go ahead and prime tomorrow, if I can. Or at least as soon as possible. We still are having warm days, but the nights are cooling off. I do not know how cool it can be before painting is not a good course of action. I have to do some lab work tomorrow, so I thought I would fetch the paint while I am out ... and a brush if I am right about using up my last one. [I can be pretty miserly with them, but there comes a point in time when you have to admit that you have squeezed that last penny of use from a paint brush.]
Because I am mostly bemoaning my door, I thought I would post two more photos. This first one is my trying to see just how much polarizing my polarizing filter could do. I was blinded when I aimed the camera into the sun, but the filter actually made the shot possible.
I wonder if I had spun the filter bit by bit, taking shots, if I could have eliminated the halo, and had just the rays show.
This next photo is totally boring, unless you are Myrtle. Then it is chock full of bliss. You see, we have had weeks and weeks of no rain. Last summer, I spend hundreds of dollars trying to keep my yard GREEN during the drought. All my neighbors had brown yards. I did not. I did not at a price I could not afford. I will admit opening the water bill was nauseating and embarrassing and guilt inducing. However, when the rain started in September, everyone else also had GREEN yards. I felt so stupid and so very foolish. I thought I was saving my grass. I was only wasting water and money. SIGH.
So, this summer, over the past month or so, when the sky dried up, I did not water my yard. Over something like 5 weeks, I watched all my GREEN lusciousness, my comfort, my bliss, shrivel up and turn into a great expanse of depressing BROWN. I did water one evening because my two-year-old weeping cherry tree, smoke bush, and crabapple tree all started looking really peaked. I also lost an entire branch of the rhododendron. It took every bit of my will power to not recklessly run the sprinklers every few days.
Well, this past week, we had three full days of a beautiful, steady, ground soaking rain. This is how my yard looks now!
I do not know what kind of grass this is. While a few spots in the yard are something else, most is this skinny stuff. This beautiful skinny stuff that looks like a prairie when it is tall and the wind blows across it. Sometimes, I just sit on the back steps, holding my puppy dog, and watch the waves rolling across my yard.
In a single summer, Firewood Man got rid of the weeds and all of the bare spots filled in using his super magical formulas for fertilizer and weed killer. I will be forever grateful he advertised wood (did I mention that I bought up all his wood and now need a new source) and then mentioned that he works as a landscaper. Twenty bucks. Twenty bucks every three months and I have lusciousness!
Oh, my dear lawn, I am so very happy you are back!!
I am Yours, Lord. Save me!
2 comments:
I very much like the title of this post! I spent quite a few minutes contemplating on which word the emphasis should be put (with very different connotations!) before reading the post. :-)
I hesitated a bit once I typed the title, but it fits. I spend a lot of effort on those screws and I wish I could have total triumph, not just with the handle. Did you just LOVE my grass photo??
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