window pains

Once we decided that we were going to put an offer in on this house, we immediately began pulling together a huge list of things that we wanted to do, as soon as we moved in.



On that list of things to do included an entire renovation of all the bathrooms and the kitchen and the landscaping. We planned to refinish all of the hardwood floors and replace the carpet. We also planned to replace all the doors and the windows and paint every square inch that could be painted.



But, now that we're here and we've had scores of contractors come through and give us bids, and we are tallying up all the totals and we can see just how much everything will cost, we are seriously pacing ourselves. We're doing our best to prioritize our work activities and live with (certain) things as they are - until we can comfortably afford to make the improvement.



So things like the blue, yellow and pink bathrooms and 50-year old single-paned windows, with triple track storm windows, will be sticking around for a while.



Now the only reason that we would upgrade the windows is because we'd like to get something more energy efficient. Although, with a triple track of storm windows, these might do very well in the winter. We prefer the style of the wooden panes and compared with our cheap windows in San Diego where the panes were within the two plates of glass and tended to collapse INSIDE the window, these windows are quite beautiful, in my opinion.



In the process of getting these windows ready to paint, we are sanding and taping and this effort has been so gruelingly slow it actually hurts.

I was feeling so frustrated with how time consuming this process was, when I have so many other windows to paint and so many other important home-improvement projects to tackle, I questioned aloud if perhaps there was lead in the paint that had been used to paint these windows, originally?



While I'm certainly concerned for the well-being of my family, I'll admit that my first thought wasn't so much from an exposure perspective, but rather - if there was indeed lead in the paint, we definitely shouldn't be sanding it and should instead, hurry up and paint over it and be done.

(Yippee! We could be DONE!!)

But Noooo.

Because Charlie, Mr. Has To Everything Right, dropped his sanding paper and rushed out and bought a lead-base paint kit and promptly tested all the paint in the house.



Turns out, there is no lead-base paint. Which is definitely good news, from a health perspective, but my husband informed me that EVEN IF there had been lead-base paint, we'd STILL have to remove the paint before we painted the windows, because apparently, the prep is "important."



Yes, the prep is important. Although at this rate, by the point we're finally ready to paint the windows, we'll probably be moving in to a retirement home.