Ahhhh... It's the little things...........

..............that take a ridiculous amount of time!!!  Like those little bitty window sills. 

First - I must go back a few months to November.  We decided to take advantage of last year's tax break and replace all our windows.  Great decision, our utility bills dropped and we lost alot of draftiness in the house.  However - what a mess.  The walls are dinged up beyond belief and the caulking - oh my goodness - the messiest caulking job I have ever seen.  And the kicker, it was supposed to be paintable caulk - and of course it wasn't. 

In addition, because the old windows had major condensation problems and the drafts, the actual sills were in really bad shape.  So I thought quick fix and then I will feel sooo much better about these areas.  Uhm - wrong!!  I have been working on 4 window sills for days now.  AUGH!!!!!!

Here is the before

Notice the huge amounts - or rather globs - of caulk.  And how damaged the wood is. 

And then there is the oh so special one that my grandson clobbered with a toy elephant.



 Yep - hundreds of tiny little elephant hoove prints.  And of course this was right beside the front door.

So the first day was spent on 2 living room windows that I decided to paint instead of leave stained.  I sanded them a little first to smooth them out some.  (If you have never sanded inside the house you are missing a special kind of cleaning).  Next I painted them.  This is when I discovered it was not paintable caulk.  Oh joy.  So resanding - note, let the paint cure first.  Then I took paintable caulk and covered the old caulk.  Failure number 2.  Then I lightly, carefully sand the caulk.  Reapply paintable caulk, let it dry - again.  And paint.  Finally success.  So then I turn my attention to the wall by the window.  Sand the caulk, tape it off and apply new caulk.  Yep - should have waited for the paint on the sill to cure.  You guessed it.  Plucked that paint off - again.  Light sanding, touch up, and finally 3 days later - 2 painted window sills.

Since I had the paint out to paint inside the window I touched up all the walls that needed it.  Took forever, but looks much better.

After painting these 2 I decided to stain the ones by the front door.  This went much better.  I took an exacto knife and cut off a bunch of the caulk on the sill.  However I discovered that for me these little projects drive me up the wall.  Stain for about 2 minutes - then wait 4 to 6 hours to sand and recoat.  Which takes another whopping 5 minutes.  I am way too impatient for that!!  So of course I get distracted and the 4 hours turns into....  Well you know.  So now here we are on day 3 of the entry windows and



Finally - hoove prints are gone and last coat of poly is on, but I still have to paint the inside and deal with all the caulk - again.  So that will be 4 windows down and 13 to go.  I have got to find a better system for this!!

It's the little things...that will drive you zonkers!!!

Susan