House Stuff

Hmm. I haven't really blogged a lot lately, I just haven't been in the mood. I have been doing a bit around the house.

Over the last month or so I have:

• Painted another window frame and section of wall.
• Put the benchtop dishwasher onto a bench sitting over the washing machine, instead of sitting it directly onto the washing machine.
• Painted the toilet (or rather the room the toilet is in!) and installed a mirror over the hand basin.
• Had the house rewired.
• Steam cleaned the carpets (myself, using one of those hire cleaner's from the supermarket)
• Made a start on a new garden bed.

Not bad for a couple of months!

Yesterday removed a cracked pane glass from a window and removed the surrounding putty, then painted the frame with metal primer. This is the second window I have replaced the glass in, and before starting I spent some time looking on the net for a better way to get the putty out. Last time I used a hammer and chisel, which worked but was very hard and made a lot of noise (my poor neighbors!). I found a number of suggestions including:

• Paint over the putty with linseed oil. Let the linseed oil soak in, to soften the putty again.
• Use parafin oil to soften the putty.
• Use paint stripper to soften the putty.
• Use oven cleaner on the putty to soften it.
• Use a heat gun to soften the putty.

Well, I have been using paint stripper to remove the paint from the window frame, and while it had a noticable affect on fresh putty, it didn't seem to make much difference to the old, hardened putty. So I thought I would give the rest of the suggestions a try, starting with the easiest and least dangerous, the linseed oil.

I put the linseed oil onto the putty, and waited a couple of hours to see what happened. The top layer softened a little bit, but it was not a significant improvement.

Then I tried the new heat gun that I had picked up from Aldi a few weeks ago. This worked amazingly well! The affect on the oldest and hardest putty was less than on the softer putty, but it still made a noticable difference. By using the heat gun, I was able to get the putty off using a putty knife. It was still a lot of work, but compared to the hammer and chisel it worked like a charm. I can't remember where I found the recommendation, or I would post a link, but to anyone who has made this suggestion on a web forum, thank you!

Today I installed the new pane of glass. This was a much larger pane of glass than the first one I had replaced, and getting it up the ladder without dropping it was a bit of a challenge, but I got there. I had a bit of trouble getting the glass into the frame, as it turns out the window frame has warped slightly and is a bit out of true. So the glass fit, but is pressed firmly against the edge of the frame on the top left and bottom right corners. This is probably what cracked the first pane of glass, so hopefully I will not be repeating this job in a month or so. Fingers crossed.