I’ve had Rob the painter here yet again, mostly working on painting the outside of the house this time. It really is a Forth Bridge style job – something seems to need doing every year, and it never seems to get finished. In fact, in the one week that I had him here, he was only able to the worst bits, and I shall have to have him back over the summer holidays to spend another week doing the slightly less urgent bits.
My priority this time was to get my bedroom window painted inside and out. It’s muggy enough now that I like to have the window open at night, but it seemed to have swollen over the winter and I couldn’t close it easily. After several mornings in a row of going outside in my dressing gown and wellie-boots to give the window a good thump from the outside to close it, it was clear that it needed to be fixed!
He’s done that, and it looks so much better. But most importantly I can close it once more without applying excessive force! He also spent the one rainy day working indoors, covering up the stains from the most recent time the roof leaked (into the extension; I’ve had extra leading put down the offending valley) and the time before the one before that (kitchen ceiling; I’ve had the chimney repointed). Fortunately, in both cases I had some spare paint of the right colour lurking in the garage, which made the job easier.
Unfortunately Rob wasn’t happy with the state of the woodwork on the extension, which he said was absolutely sodden underneath the paint. It wasn’t that the paintwork itself was defective, but rather that water was somehow getting behind it. I’ve had a roofer round to inspect it, and he concurs. Apparently the roof has been built without an adequate overhang, and the mortar holding the tiles in place is getting excessively wet, and the water is then soaking into the barge boards and soffits. Ouch! That’s going to be expensive to repair, but unfortunately it will have to be done sooner rather than later……
