Cottage Cleaning

Luckily the pipe repair from last week held so I can continue on the cottage cleaning. I secured the sagging drywall in the kitchen, so now it’s patching the screws and all of the drill holes with some joint compound. I do three coats of that and let it dry 24 hours per coat. While that goes on, I start in the bedrooms and do deep cleanings up there. Mostly it’s just pulling out all the furniture, rewaxing the woodwork with lavender scented wax, wiping down the floors with citrus cleaner, and washing all of the bedding. After the bedrooms and living room are done, the big work remaining is in the kitchen and bathroom. I get the ceiling patched where the paint was peeling and noticed it seemed to come from the shower head spraying water so I add some extra plumber’s tape to the ball joint that allows the shower head to pivot. In the kitchen, the fridge keeps getting more and more rust due to the humidity down here so I’ll need to address that because cosmetically it looks bad. I sand down the rust spots and then apply some Rustoleum rust removing gel to try and neutralize any remaining rust. I have a can of appliance epoxy paint, but it’s too difficult to use in the close quarters of the cottage and I don’t want to move the fridge outside. So I try some local hardware stores for a brushable appliance epoxy, but there’s none in stock so I just get the standard Rustoleum metal paint and give that a shot. It takes about three coats to cover up the bare metal spots.

The ceiling above the shower head was repaired to remove peeling paint.

Rusting on the fridge liner.

Removing the rust with gel applied.

After the Rustoleum.

Looks almost brand new.

The rest of the work is more deep cleaning with scrubbing all of the floors and woodwork. I remove all the decorations because after I’m done with the joint compound, I’m going to need to paint the ceiling.

As most of the rooms get finished, I take on a few bonus projects. First is this weird light in the porch. It’s probably some folk art with a fluer de lance and a dragon head. It’s been painted a bunch of times and it’s all cracked and peeling and the lamp socket is all rusted out. The plug is also cracked and looks to be from the 1950s.

Porch light

Cracked and peeling paint.

I disasemble the lamp and will strip it and rewire with new lamp parts.

The head was screwed and nailed to the backing.

The other project is painting the entry door to the cottage. Right now the door is painted white and I want to try out a nautical blue. I get a quart of Sherwin Williams Emerald Urethane which is supposed to be an oil-type paint in a modern formulation. It’s getting harder to find traditional oil paints besides the linseed oil ones, but those are very pricy and are not available in stores. I don’t want to wait to order linseed oil paint so I give the Sherwin Williams a shot. Before painting, I sand down the existing paint a little and wash it down using soap and water.

Existing white paint.

I apply the blue paint with a brush and the first coat is a little tricky to put on. It’s a little blotchy so I will need to do one or two more coats. I wonder if I should have put down a coat of primer before painting over the existing white paint too. After each coat dries, I do another using a brush. I start to get a hang of the application and it requires a light touch to spread the paint. After the second and third coats, things are looking a little more even.

First coat is a little blotchy.

Second coat is better.

Last coat looks good.

The ceiling in the kitchen also has been getting coats of joint compound followed by sanding. Now that is done, I prime the bare joint compound spots. That works OK but they are discolored from the primer so I need to repaint the ceiling. I try using Behr’s standard paint, but find it doesn’t spread well at all, so I switch to Sherwin Williams SuperPaint and that works better with coverage and hiding marks.

Joint compound primed.

Primer doesn’t match existing ceiling so will need to repaint the ceiling.

After a coat of paint.

Painted ceiling and painted fridge.

On the outside of the cottage, I do some landscaping and start tackling a plumbing pipe on the exterior of the cottage. I think the pipe is a stack pipe and made of cast iron. It was painted white, but rust is bleeding through the paint and it looks trashy. Before I repaint, I need to remove the existing rust and paint so I start using CitriStrip on the metal to see how that goes. It takes off the paint, but this will be a slow process. I’ll revisit stripping the pipe over the next weekend.

Rusting pipe.

Starting to strip the paint and rust off the pipe.

Summer also means cleaning up the landscaping around the cottage. I have planters in front of the cottage and a flower bed near the rear of my house. I want to give a stronger border to these elements and for the flower bed, there’s a vinyl edging. The edging is all collapsed and doesn’t look good so I pick up some cedar edging at the garden center. Before I replace the vinyl ediging, I pine tar the wood.

Bucket of pine tar.

Applying the pine tar.

The pine tar takes a while to dry so I leave that for installation until next week. In front of the cottage I have some planters that I was trying to place on top of shells. As I hunt for shells on the beach, I’d toss them in front of the cottage hoping to build them out as a ground cover, but it never built up a good amount of shells to look nice. I tried to buy crushed shells at local garden centers, but no one sold shells in quantities under truckloads. So I give up and buy river pebbles and small white stones instead. I stake out rectangles and then use the stone as the ground cover. With the stone as the base, I then put the shells on top. This gives a cleaner appearance and then I can add shells as I find them.

Before landscaping the planters, there weren’t enough shells to make the area look clean.

Landscaping with stones with shells on top.

Planters in front of the cottage.

Other side of the cottage.