Back at Work

Yes, I have been slacking off on the blog posts. However, life in Italy is not all sunshine and wine. Lately, it's mostly been "whine." Our latest project is refinishing the front door. Yesterday, we took it off the hinges and put it on sawhorses on the back patio. I thought it would take about an hour to sand. Silly me. I forgot how ornate it is. The power sanders were mostly useless. It took Dom and I working together about six hours to get it ready for the first coat of varnish. However, it was too late to put a finish coat on yesterday since the door had to be back up and closed overnight. This morning we took it off the hinges again.

Thus, the doorway looks like this:


As you can see, no door. We did put up our not so useful bug screen to try to keep the cats outside. Even so I caught one halfway up the steps giving me that plaintive "I could be an indoor cat" look.


The living room looks like this right now. There was a possibility of rain this morning so after doing the final sanding outside we decided it would be best to put the varnish on inside. Unfortunately the door takes up most of the available floor space. I am wedged in the corner by the stairs trying not to let the back of the chair rub against the brick and stone behind me.

In another couple of hours we will put the door back up and see if it sticks to the frame overnight. We still need to finish sanding the door frame. It will likely be Friday before we get the final coat on the door and Saturday before we finish up the frame. The rest of the work is not too tough but we still need to hang out and guard the house from the curious cats.