Since our house has been long overdue for an exterior paint job, in midsummer we contacted a local house painter and asked him for a price. His price seemed reasonable enough, and he felt that the job could be done before winter, so we asked him to add us to his schedule.

Three weeks later he informed us that another job had come up; he might be able to get part of our house painted before winter, but the lion's share would be pushed back to next summer. And, by the way, he would need us to do much of the preparatory work, including setting nails, repairing damaged clapboards and window trim - the difficult and tedious tasks that normally precede painting.

We decided that, since the challenging jobs were going to be our responsibility, we might as well do the job ourselves.

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We began with the north side, replacing a few clapboards and one window sill, re-nailing where required, scraping, sanding, and caulking where required.

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The downstairs north wall took us four days to complete, including carpentry, scraping, sanding, two coats of primer, and two of solid color stain.

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We set ourselves a goal for the remainder of this fall: the four side walls of the back house, and the back wall of the front house - approximately half of the complete project.

At this writing, we've finished all but the downstairs south wall, although repairs on it are well underway.

So far, Jan has re-glazed twenty of the twenty-six 8- and 12-light sash on these six walls.

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The upper and lower north walls and the back wall of the front house - finished last Sunday

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Preparatory work on the south-facing first floor is in progress and should be complete a few days before we leave for England.

Total cost so far? Less than 5% of the quote, and we're nearly halfway through the job!

Looking forward to relaxing in Amsterdam next week . . . . .

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