Window Repair - Part 2

Having dealt with the bird in my fireplace (see previous post), and finished my coffee, I returned to the window repair job.

Step 8: Overcoat primer with 2 coats of outdoor paint. Unfortunately, it was raining outside, which made for less than ideal painting conditions.

Still, once the worst of the showers had cleared, I lightly sanded the metal primer, and applied a coat of outdoor paint. It was supposed to be touch dry in half an hour, and OK to paint over in 2 hours. However it wasn't touch dry for 1.5 hours (probably because of the rain and the resulting high humidity), so I wasn't able to put the second coat on until after lunch. Here is the result:

I waited until about 5 pm to let the top coat dry.

Step 9: Use Caulking gun to apply silicon sealer to window rim, then put glass in place. Press down to remove all bubble in sealer.
Step 10: Apply putty. I had done some research online, so I had some idea of what to do with the putty. It was a bit lumpy, so I kneaded it a bit until it was smooth (very much like kneading dough). I then took lumps, rolled them into strips and applied them to the window. The putty reminded me a lot of play dough to work with. Here's what it looked like:



Step 11: smooth down putty. Apparently putty is made up of calcite mixed with linseed oil, so it is recommended that the putty knife be wiped in linseed oil to stop it sticking to the putty. Apparently linseed oil is another name for flaxseed oil, which I had. So I wiped flaxseed oil onto the putty knife and got to smoothing. I think the end result was pretty OK. Probably not as good a glazier would have done, but not bad for a first try.


When the glazier sold me the glass and putty, he warned me to let the putty dry for a couple of weeks before painting over it. So it will be a couple of weeks before I can finish the job and paint the whole frame. Still, I am pretty happy with how it has turned out.

There's a bird in my fireplace!

This morning, as I was sitting in my living room drinking my coffee, I heard a loud skritching scrabbling noise from the chimney over my wood heater (the wood heater doesn't actually get used much).

Suddenly, a beak poked out from the top of the glass door. Then the whole bird appeared:


It was a reasonably big blackbird.

I did what I normally do when this kind of thing happens. I phoned my mum. (I know, but she has a good 30 years more home owning experience than me, and definitely more wood fire experience). She said that in her experience (see, usefull), birds are exhaused by the time the get down the chimney, and can't get back up. She suggested using a towel to trap the bird and take it outside.

So I got set up with a drop sheet outside the fireplace, to catch any ash (which turned out to be a very good idea), and a large towel to try to catch the bird in. By this time the bird had moved to the back of the stove and I couldn't catch it. So I left the door open and stood back, to see if the bird would make an appearance. Sure enough, it came flying out. Fortunately, I had the main door and a window in a side room wide open. The bird flew down towards the door, spotted the window and obviously liked the look of it better, and flew straight out. So that worked out well.

I am thinking that given that I have athsma problems, and therefore have problems with wood smoke anyway, that removing the fireplace, and also the chimney, might be a good idea. One bird in the fireplace was interesting, but I don't want this to be a regular occurance.

Window Repair - Part 1

I am going to try a new feature. This post will include (wait for it) < drumroll> PICTURES!

Well, that's the plan anyway.

I own an old concrete house with steel frame windows. One of the windows had a cracked pane of glass. Below the crack, water had obviously gotten into the frame, because it was starting to rust. Heres what it looked like:


I decided it would be a good idea to replace the glass, sand down, rust proof and repaint the window frame.

Step 1: Measure the window frame. Check.
Step 2: Find a glazier who will cut me a piece of glass to size on a Saturday morning. Check. I found a nice bloke in East Bentleigh, who not only sold me the glass but also a big blob of putty to use in installing it. He flinched a bit when I told him it was a steel frame window and told me that they were more work to deal with than timber frames.
Step 3: Stop by Bunnings and purchase some tools I was missing: a putty knife and a cold chisel. It turns out that a Cold Chisel is not just a band name, it is a type of chisel (unlike a wood chisel) designed for use on hard surfaces such as concrete. Many thanks to dad for that useful piece of info (he didn't know that Cold Chisel was a band, so there was an information exchange there).
Step 4: Remove putty and Glass from window:


This was much harder work than it sounds!

Step 5: Remove all remaining putty, and scrape with paint scraper and metal brush.
Step 6: Overpaint rust with Rust converter


Step 7: Paint with Metal primer, to protect the sections of bare metal without rust:



Now, wait 4 to 6 hours for the metal primer to dry. In this case, that means wait until tomorrow.

Earthquake!

Well, it was only a little one (which is good!) but it's the first earthquake I have ever experienced, so to me it was pretty cool. Especially as it was small enough (2.9 on the Richter scale according to the papers) that noone got hurt and there wasn't any real damage.

I was sitting in my living room, watching TV, when I heard this loud crash (like someone had dropped something really heavy on the street outside), and then felt vibration through the floorboards. It was a bit like having a large truck drive by outside, except that I live on a quiet side street, and we don't get big trucks driving by.

I didn't know what it was at first, and spent a few minutes looking out of windows trying to work out what had happened. It occured to me then that it might have been an earthquake, but I wasn't sure until I saw the papers the next morning. So there you have it, I have now experienced an earthquake.

(Of course, this actually happened a few weeks ago and I have only just gotten around to blogging about it, but hey, better late than never :) )