Our Old House- Part 3

By the spring of 1970 the inside of our house was finished. All of the floors had either been sanded and refinished or painted, and all the walls had been painted or replaced and painted. The kitchen was completely new, and true to the style of the time (or to our poor judgement) the ceiling had been dropped to accommodate a new acoustic tile/installation. Four banks of four 48″ fluorescent lights in each! I grew to hate them, but that’s another story for another time. I also installed those Dacor bricks on the walls- another mistake.

It was time to paint the house. We decided on a classic scheme, white with forest green trim. The trim was a guess, but from scraping I saw that white was the original color. Two coats were necessary. Getting to the top of the house in the front involved climbing twenty five or thirty feet up a ladder with a paint can and brush. This is something I have now done several times, and is always traumatic. The worst part is trying to get that last few inches- you don’t want to climb down, move the ladder and climb up again, so you stretch, holding the brush with your fingertips. Or at least, I do.

We also wanted shutters. I saw the screw holes in the window frames where there had been shutter hinges, so I knew we were on the right track. To make a long story short, I painted and hung fourteen pairs of wooden shutters, complete with the proper hardware. And this was before I heard of screw bits on electric drills. I think I used one of those mechanical screwdrivers that rotate as you push them.

After some weeks, I was done. As I remember, I was coming down the ladder for the last time when a siding salesman came up the driveway, and asked if I might be interested in aluminum siding. I let him live.

Thano Schoppel licensed realtor 845 729-3902 thano .thano.schoppel