I am guessing that these frames are from the 1950's so there is a good chance that the old paint contains lead.

For this reason I am stripping them right back to bare wood to remove any chance at all that there is lead in the house.

Also, because of the risk of lead in the paint I cannot use a power sander or heat gun.

Instead I have been using paint strippers that come as a gell.

When I scrape off the bubbled paint it stays bound up in the gell and removes any hazard from lead dust.

Up to a certain point I had been using Methylene Chloride which is dangerous in itself - must be used in a well ventilated place - so I have been working with it out in the open and using a fan to blow any fumes away from me.

More recently I have changed to some alternative, safer products - these work more slowly (two hours instead of 30 seconds) but I am persisting with them as they feel much less stressful to work with.

Saturday

This was a bit of a "finishing off day".

The first job was to apply some "mis-tint" paint to any raw timber in the right hand structure.

After this I reinstalled the temporary corrugated iron decking of the veranda.

This took quite a few hours and a bit of work with the power shears.

Next I stapled on some clear builder's plastic on the right hand bay and trimmed off the excess on both the left and right bays.

After this I applied sealant to the lower flashing pan on the RHS.

I had finished all this quite early (3.30 pm) and after a break I decided to do some work on finishing off all flashing that will be required before applying building wrap.

I asked Ian (neighbour) for some advice and ended up chatting for an hour.

Pretty much after that was finished Jim and Sandy visited and we probably spent another hour having coffee.

Finally - a shower and then back home.

I am expecting to spend the next 6 weekends at home working on refurbishing the windows.