Destaple

This house has a lot of wood. Wooden windows, wooden shutters, wooden window frames, wooden cupboards, a wooden work surface in the kitchen of about 8 meters, wooden doors, etc. The state is alright, though not terribly well maintained the past few years.

Like here, on the sun side. And we have a lot of sun. But maybe I have said that already.

On the outside it's not better. Au contraire. It is quite worse, because quite some windows have mosquito nets stapled to the outside. As mosquito net material does not last long that has been repeated a few times. And you obviously do not remove the old staples. So now I encounter them. All of them.

And, as each window in Spain has a thick iron racks ("rejas" in Spanish), it's not so easy to reach them. But I can, with a tiny mirror. And a knife to pry the staples a bit, a small screwdriver to do more prying, and a big screwdriver for even more prying. Then pliers to do the actual plieing.

And then you get this.

Admit it, this looks better already..

A surprise is that at the outside, between the stone wall and the window frame wood there is a cavity of about 1 cm, that was filled with something like gypsum or lime mortar. It was brittle enough to fall out here and there by just using the sander, which I have cunningly stuck through the rejas. The remaining stuff in the joints I could easily remove with just a small screwdriver. Which is nice, as I can now treat the wood that was behind this white stuff.

So what should I put back? Lime mortar? Gypsum? Those who dare to mention silicone sealant will be severely punished.

Oil tomorrow. Tung!