On Friday my helper friend and my general helper were here. My helper friend fed all the seedlings and watered the house plants. My general helper and I got the screens out of the cellar, 43+ of them, and outside.
It was a good day for washing screens, warm and humid. Once we’d finished them in about 1½ hours, we started putting the screens in the storm doors.
Screens are crucial here with the swamp 30’ away. With the open plan and passive solar heating, managing the sun access and the air flow is crucial to keeping it pleasant inside. I am still figuring out the system, as last year there were no shades and no insulation in the attic.
We did the front door first and it wasn’t bad. Then we did the back door. That one was hard as some of the drilled holes for the grilles were crooked.
The office door was easiest as it doesn’t have grilles and bars. It’s not used much so I didn’t put them on. It was nice to have the air flow through the house. Then we moved the armoire back into place. That will help air flow a lot. We had these done by 11AM and just about then the sun finally came out. So I got the shades pulled against it and we moved onto putting screens in windows.
The awning windows were easy as I didn’t have to wash them first. When my window lady comes the screens come right out and we can wash the window. But the double hungs I have to take them out to get the storm window out and put the screen in. So I needed to wash the windows as I didn’t want to take them out twice.
The problem was that over the last year, all the window cleaners I tried would not remove some greasy streaking, no matter what I tried. I’d used the same cleaner and paper towels with very good results for years. And suddenly they no longer worked, nor did any other cleaner, purchased or made. I googled it and found a site that said try soapy water and a squeegee. So I ordered a squeegee and we tried it.
The first solution of dish soap and warm water removed most of the streaking but not all. So we tried again with more soap in the water and it worked really well! But there was a lot of trial and error as we worked out the best system. We had 6 windows to work on in this room. In the end we were quite pleased with the results.
Old North garden: top – bottom: bloodroot, daffodils, Virginia bluebells, feverfew, Sweet William, red trillium, marshmallow, grape hyacinths, hybrid spiderwort (in pot), sweet woodruff, Dutchman’s breeches, lily of the valley (white), anemones mixed with snowdrops
It was noon by then and she had to go. I was pretty tired and took a nap. My contractor was supposed to come at 3PM, but life events interfered. He called to say he’d be here on Saturday.
I asked him if he could do a couple window jobs for me when he came before he starts the woodshed. The storm window inserts for the doors are very heavy and more than the general helper and I could manage to get into the cellar. And there’s a screen door that hasn’t been hung yet that I’d like him to put up the first time.
Same garden, different angle
On Saturday I will get the rest of the awning window screens in and start upstairs in the old bedroom and get some windows washed and the screens in. Ventilating the upstairs will help a lot with cooling the downstairs. It’s to be another wicked hot day and the humidity has soared. After months of 10 – 20% humidity, and a couple weeks of 50%, it now stands at 85%.
I can tell one job that probably will happen soon is installing the AC in the office. The climate change has decreed high humidity along with high temps lately and I don’t cope well with that.