Today's Progress

Sharon spent nearly another 4 hours stripping the master bedroom windows. It's looking much closer to stain ready now. Just have the crown moulding (the most difficult part), the inside trim around one window and the sills left.It's been a challenge to clean the wood because there are so many holes and gouges in it. Over the last 99 years, quite a few different curtain rods have been screwed into this woodwork. Sanders and scrapers just weren't getting the paint out and we didn't want to get in there with dental tools. No thanks.

So Sharon figured out a trick for more easily removing paint from these spots. (Perhaps not new to others, but new to her.) She would apply chemical stripper generously to the areas. After 15 minutes or so, she would rub the area with a wire brush; most of the paint would come out of the hole. Then she would remove the paint and stripper residue with scour pads. It doesn't usually remove all the paint/filler, but it does generally get enough material out of the hole that we can fill it again with stainable wood filler before we stain.

Sharon also started sanding the doors that were dipped a couple months ago. Time to get these stained and rehung.