I spent so much time trying to find my “Wave” petunias back in the spring.  They had to be the trailing kind for baskets and I wanted the blue/purple varieties because they have more fragrance.  I went to many, many nurseries until I found the right ones.  You can read about it Here.

After all that work, my petunias started dying off.  I read in an Erie Times News article on August 22 about the tomato blight that has hit the nightshade family of plants in the northeast.  Our cool, wet weather is part of the problem this summer.  Fungi likes this kind of weather.  Petunias, I found out, are in the nightshade family, like tomatoes and potatoes.  I always thought the petunia stems and leaves looked a lot like tomato plants with the fuzz and all.

Last year I had the same thing happen.  I thought maybe it was spider mites or some very small bug that got them.  This year I used all new potting soil and put a lot of effort into planting the baskets to hang from my front porch.  Six in the front and more on the back deck.  I bought new basket liners, too.  However, when I went to plant them, the old ones still looked good so I kept and used them.  Big mistake.  Get new ones every year.  It saves in the long run.

I planted 6 plants in each basket. They were going good for a few weeks and then, within a few days, I started noticing some substantial dying-off of the leaves.  My heart sunk because I then remembered it happened last year, too.  I had some Immunox stored on a shelf in my basement and sprayed them.  I followed up in another week with another application.  It was too late, but it kind of saved a couple of the plants but still, they looked bad.  I took them down and will dispose of them, the soil and the basket liners.  I’ll bleach the baskets and let them sit out in the sun.

Below are what all my petunia baskets look like except the ones on the sides of my porch.

When researching this problem, one person on a message-board thread gave advise to someone with a similar problem.  Don’t keep using petunias if your area is subject to blight. You also won’t have to use all that insecticide and fungicide if you get plants that do well in your area.  That is good advice if the area is going to be shaded (like my porch.)  All the effort and expense of planting something that doesn’t thrive is silly.  Next year, I’ll plant some other flower that does well in baskets, in our climate or settle for a different variety of petunia.  The two side baskets that are really big and had new liners didn’t have as big a problem.  They get more air and sun than the baskets in the front side of the porch.  They also are of a different variety.  Below is a photo of the side basket. The side baskets started to die off on the porch sides but the outside of the baskets is doing really good.

It’s been 7 years since I stripped the beadboard on the front porch of its 8+ decades of built-up paint.  I finished it with dewaxed garnet shellac because, when stripping the paint, I found that a thick coat of shellac was the first coat on the beadboard and it kept a good bond all those years.  Shellac isn’t suppose to be good for areas around water.  Our covered, but not enclosed, porch does get water from rain and snow when the wind blows but the beadboard is vertical so it doesn’t cause a problem. Though my porch does get piled-up snow on it sometimes in the winter,  it is facing north so it doesn’t get the abuse a southern exposure would.    I’ve read that dewaxed shellac holds up a bit better than the natural shellac as far as protecting against water. Neither is recommended for use around water or outdoor use but that is what was used on it all those decades ago so I decided to use it back 7 years ago when I refinished the beadboard.

This summer I noticed areas that were starting to lighten near the bottom.  Well, 7 years was a respectable time for a finish to last outside, even the painted columns and top railings didn’t last that long without another coat.  About a week ago I went over the beadboard again in some lower spots with the dewaxed garnet shellac.  Yesterday I sat out on a footstool and took Waterlox and applied it over the shellac.   Waterlox is much better at protecting against water than shellac is.  It is used on kitchen counters and in bathrooms.  It is so easy to work with.  I applied it to the beadboard just as if I was rubbing a liquid wax on it.  It doesn’t dry nearly as quickly as shellac but that is a good thing, too.  It has time to level out.  Another reason I wanted to use Waterlox is I can apply repeated coats over the next several years and not have to sand in between.  It will melt into itself (much like shellac melts into itself) when applied over another coat of Waterlox.  I hate polyurethane because you have to scratch it up with sandpaper for the next layer to bond to it. Too much work.  On things I have had to use urethane (spar) on, I find I have to repair the finish just as often as I do with the shellac and Waterlox.

So why not use something that will give the look of fine furniture.  There is a beautiful depth to the wood when you use shellac or Waterlox.  I don’t care for the look of polyurethanes. They look plastic to me (and peel like it, too, when they fail.)  I can just wipe on Waterlox every so often (so easy to do) and keep the finish nice. Waterlox looks just as pretty as shellac to get that depth-look (I think,) though it has only a slight amber color to it.  You can add special dyes to it to color it. Waterlox is much easier to work with than shellac in my opinion.

In this photo below you will see the beadboard which is now 92 years old.  It is coated with 3 coats of dewaxed garnet shellac that was applied after I stripped it 7 years ago and the touch-up done last week and then one coat of Waterlox done yesterday. I may add additional coats before winter if the weather holds.  I have many other projects to do before winter.

Waterlox and shellac will not last long on wood that gets sunlight, though.  The UV rays break down the wood fibers through the finish and there goes the bond.  They do make Waterlox for outdoor purposes with a UV block in it.  It’s made for marine applications.  But in my case I’m using the same stuff that I’m going to use on my indoor wood floors when I finally get to refinishing them because the porch gets very little sunlight.

The cons of Waterlox would be the smell until it cures.  I had to mail order mine because I couldn’t find any locally.  Also, once the container is opened and oxygen gets to it, it will start to gel.  I have gone back to apply a second application of Waterlox on something a couple of weeks later only to find it had gelled up and was no longer any good.  It is maddening because it is expensive. They make a product of some kind of gas you squirt into the container to keep the oxygen out but I’ve read it still goes bad on you. I try to do several projects at once to use it up before it gels.

Always make sure with whatever finish you chose, that you dont’ let sun hit it until it is fully cured and that you let each coat cure fully dry before you add another because any solvent unevaporated in  a coat below will blister the finish especially when it warms up when hit by sunshine.

The porch was beautiful.  And then it rained. Read the rest of this entry »

Please see the previous posts to see more before photos.

After much sweat and work, the porch floor was getting sanded clean of more than 8 decades of paint.

Starting to sand. Read the rest of this entry »

It wasn’t just the sides and the floor in bad shape (see part 1,) the columns holding up the porch roof and sleeping porch looked bad, too.

Read the rest of this entry »

By far the biggest single job we had to do was the front porch. The floor didn’t look like it could be saved. It was awful. Read the rest of this entry »

All this rain is really putting a damper on my outside projects.  Oh, well, we should be used to it here in the north east.  I guess I’ll go out and try to find 2 discounted hanging baskets to add to a bird feeder pole Read the rest of this entry »

The gray, cracked and in some places crumbling wall in our kitchen stairwell was an eyesore. I didn’t do anything about it for a few years because, really, no one saw it but us. I even thought when we first moved in that we could wall up the back stairwell so we would have more room for appliances in our kitchen. The stairs in the kitchen meet the front stairs on a landing half way up to the second story. I didn’t think I would even use the kitchen stairs. Read the rest of this entry »

The front porch was way too big of a project to start off with. In fact, it was so bad with peeling paint that the loan wouldn’t go through without it being repainted and the deadline was just 2 days away. The loan inspector told us we couldn’t have any chipping or peeling paint because of lead in old paint. He suggested we just seal it down by repainting it. That was a bit silly, I thought, to just paint over peeling paint without getting down to a sound base. It was such a temporary fix that wouldn’t even last the winter. What’s the point? The older women that we were buying the house from surely couldn’t paint it and didn’t want to pay someone else to do it. Read the rest of this entry »