Work on the house ...

Lin mends, paints, varnishes, restores - that drawer found in the ruins of an abandoned house

Our friend Barry said the other evening when I was telling him - a little boastfully - about the work I’d been doing on set of shutters for the French windows onto our sea-facing balcony. 

5 years since last maintained

“Simon, you’re an idiot. You can buy louvred exterior window shutters that are indestructible, their colour running right through like words in 'Brighton Rock'. Buy them measured up on the internet, have them delivered and fitted and look after them for ever with a duster and damp cloth!”
“I know, I know but I like the variations that tell their history, Barry. You can see a joiner’s small variations. Run your hand over surfaces with many variations … maintenance against roasting sun, wind and rain … the blistered surface paint, undercoat and primer, raised by weather to the original wood so the slats are weakened. They split along the grain, get wet, dry out, get wet again and rot!”
“Exactly, Simon. But please yourself.”  

Lin had helped me ease the door length shutters off their rusty pintles. Richard, our son, staying with us for a week, carried both shutters downstairs and into the apothiki where I stripped off crisped peeling paint, cutting out nearly a square foot of rotted wood from one lower panel and scarfing in a replacement corner, securing it with a 5 inch screw, gluing, and sculpting it to fit with the angle grinder and hiding my imperfect joins with wood filler. Four slats in the lower panel of one shutter had broken. To replace them would have required separating them from one side of the shutter - literally disassembling it from all the other slats - 57 of them. I rummaged in the apothiki to dig out the plywood I needed to jigsaw measured panels that I used heavy duty glue to bond to both sides of the bottom 12 slats of one shutter. 

Plywood panel over broken louvre slats

“It’ll look odd if you don’t do the same on the opposite shutter”

“Too bad”

Once both shutters were thoroughly smoothed - finishing with fine sandpaper - I painted bared wood with preservative varnish, then applied coats of Corfu Green. After the first had dried I filled the few cracks I could see in the shiny green finish with wood filler before adding a final coat of green, leaving it two days to dry, before taking the shutters back upstairs where Lin helped me hang them back on well oiled pintles. 

Shutters restored - "You won't need to do that again" remarked Lin

As a child I thought houses lasted forever. I’ve known now for many years that their default condition is steady collapse from roof to foundations. Enjoying a house entails looking after it - not just daily housekeeping, a job for which servants exist and sex roles defined as woman’s work. Ha! Since the end of March and my 83rd birthday we've been doing maintenance on our home in Ano Korakiana. First I started the stable door beside the house, a door we hardly use except for opening the top for ventilation and the bottom to bring in shopping. I sanded it, then gave it two coats of Corfu green paint, shined up the brass door handle, its face plate and key escutcheon, with metallic polish. In the process of working on the door, I discovered that the wood in the door frame was termite and ant infested with rot at the foot of both jambs. I cleaned out one with a multi-cutter, and used my chainsaw to cut out six inches of the other, then found an approximate sized piece of deal from the apothiki, scarfing and carving it to match using a heavy duty flap grinder disk.

Flap sander

Corfu Green gloss

I used the vacuum cleaner to clear out the saw, paint, and plaster dust, cleaned surfaces with a cloth soaked in white spirit after drilling 4mm holes the length of the jamb to inject pesticide between wood and stonework using an aerosol from Technomart that comes with a metal injection needle. I did the same with the top of the door frame. It was trickier to restore the frame’s nice curved bevel from which I used the multi-cutter to chisel out yet more termite infested wood. I fiddled around in the odd pieces box and selected three pieces of pine to scarf into the butchered frame; glued them in place using the sander on the angle grinder to smooth and carve back the bevel.

Alan Barrrett's 2010 design for a porch below the inexplicably demolished balcony which he rebuilt

Lin rollers exterior emulsion onto our porch

“You’ve not done that well” said Lin

I worked on it more, producing an improved semblance of the curved arch, smoothing filler into cracks and joins. Reaching up was giving me aches. I worked for a few seconds at a time. When all looked as smooth as I could make it, I brushed clear preservative varnish on the bare wood, and after more insecticide injection with more holes and seams again plastered, I painted the door frame with two coats of the gloss green used on the door, covering a few more sins in the surface so it looked spick and span. 

“You shouldn’t really have painted that until I’d painted the porch walls” said Lin 

“Now you say!” 

True, my line between green and white was imperfect. Over the next few days Lin plastered and smoothed the surrounding porch walls under the balcony built at the same time 15 years ago by Alan Barrett. We applied white exterior paint, using masking tape on the door frame so she could straighten the line between gloss green and white. 

“Can I cover the Easter crosses on the lintel?” asked Lin

“I’d rather not” 

There are eight of them burned there with a candle flame lit in Jerusalem on Holy Saturday night, lit from the church in Ano Korakiana and nursed gently home in a gradually dispersing procession home from the announcement of resurrection "Χριστός ἀνέστη” at the village square, so that a cross can be traced in candle flame on everyone’s lintel. In the interests of achieving dazzling white surrounded by deep Corfu green she painted over them. We’ve still got four more above the door we actually use under the veranda.

This work completed Lin turned her attention to small cavities where a couple of inches of rusting rebar were showing plus a long crack a few inches from the edge along the underside of the balcony, built on to the side of the house in 2010 by Alan Barrett, commissioned to replace a similar balcony inexplicably demolished for the previous English owners of the house. Almost matching the balcony’s underside crack was another above the same moulding on the top of the balcony. We set up a stepladder so Lin could work. I held the ladder - an imperative when either of us use steps. 

She painted the exposed rebars with rust converter then mixed up rapid drying leak-fixing cement - Aquafix - to fill and smooth the cavities and the long crack. It was time consuming work done in the early evening to escape the June heat. The same was done on the balcony floor.

Filling the long crack at the edge of the balcony

Lin: “This is even trickier as the cracks on the top are deeper. I need to really work the cement into them”

That completed I painted the floor of the balcony with coats of concrete surface sealant and stabiliser - BI-100 - a milky liquid which soaked satisfactorily into the filled cracks. Now all that’s needed is more exterior white paint and the balcony’s good. 

Digging out ant infested areas of the window frame

Meantime on the inside of the recessed window in our dining room I noticed little mounds of variegated dust, the consistency of ground pepper, collecting on the interior sill. 

“Ants” said Gerrard during an evening's supper. 

Removing decorative odds and ends on the sill I tapped the frame to hear the timbre of hollowed wood. Chiselling at it, I uncovered insect tunnelling again but no rot. Ants scurried away having mined their way into two feet of the frame - inside and out. I drilled more holes for injection of insecticide, repeated for treatment over three days, after which I filled all cavities and holes, and, once the filler was dry, smoothed it with a rotary sander and hand sanding to create a surface for more Corfu green outside and white gloss inside. 

A few days later, final work - for the time being - on the concrete balcony; Lin painting under and along its moulded edge with white emulsion, she well covered with mosquito repellent, while I lit coffee grounds to smoulder and steadied her step ladder.

Between chores I cool myself in our paddling pool.