More Cottage Prep

Continuing with the cottage prep, I had an appliance repairman replace the gasket on the refrigerator. I turn off the fridge during the winter, but even with it dried out, there’s still some mold that appears on the gasket from the moisture. After repeated cleanings, the gasket is starting to tear so I have a pro replace it because that feels like a task that goes better after having done it a few times.

Plus, I need to save my time for the chair repainting. I start off by scraping the large chunks of dirt off and then I decide to take the chairs outside for a more intense cleaning using some TSP. The TSP starts getting off the dirt but then when I take one of the chairs over to the hose for a rinse, I notice that the “wood” is starting to bubble and bulge. Turns out the seats aren’t solid wood but instead are a pressed wood pulp. I kind of was getting a strange vibe from the wood when I was doing the scraping because I noticed a few gashes developing that felt unlike previous wood scraping I’ve done but I chalked it up to sloppy technique. I immediately stop the cleaning with TSP and rinsing with the hose, and use a wet rag to rinse off the TSP. Luckily I only caused the bubbling on 1 chair so I set that aside to dry.

I let the chairs dry and use my SpeedHeater on the bubbled area to try and get rid of any lingering moisture. I switch over to using denatured alcohol and naphtha as my cleaner since that should prevent the wood pulp from expanding. Once the cleaning is over, I then do some final sanding. I also secure any loose spindles with Wonderlokking Tite Chairs glue. For the painting, I do two coats of Zinsser oil primer. A little sanding after the primer and then it’s two coats of the Sherwin Williams Emerald Trim Enamel. I already have the Oceanside blue from using it on the cottage door, so I repurpose that for the seats. For the legs and spindles I get a new can of Shell White. Once that’s all dry, I place them in the cottage and cross that off my list.

With most of the interior all cleaned and minor repairs made, now it’s off to pick up some flowers for the landscaping. I realized that I was playing with fire planting mint directly into my garden bed, so I rip that out and move to a pot. I didn’t realize that mint takes over a garden so hopefully I dodged a bullet by ripping it out. My lavender plant is still thriving and a mini rose I bought for $1.99 last year is still around after the winter. I try a few old favorites like citronella, begonias, and coelus but add some geraniums and celosia to the mix.

Up front I still have the native Eastern Bluestar plugging away. I add some zinnias and try out a blue fescue ornamental grass in the flower box.