We have been doing things around the condo to get it ship shape.  Aside from painting some rooms, and loving and kissing the boat, we had to re-varnishing our front door.  A few of the people have had trouble with termites in their doors.  (One of the good things about living in Minnesota….No Termites)  The people had to pull off their doors and send them to an exterminator to be bagged and smogged to kill any termites in their doors.  Then they re-varnished their doors so they looked like brand new.  Now ours looked like crap so looks like another project for Gary ;).

So we were going to be without our front door for a few weeks.  Luckily we had a lanai door (for those of you Northerners who have never heard of a lanai, a lanai is like a screened in porch 😉 ) to go in and out of.  Again, Gary does some thinking outside of the box.  Everyone else just stapled some plastic on their door frame, hoping a praying no little lizards would get past their weak attempts to keep them out.   Gary, on the other hand, went and bought a sheet of 1 inch foam insulation, cut it to size and duck taped it into the door frame.  There weren’t any creepy crawlies getting into our place, no siree Bob!

Luckily, after varnishing over 150 feet of railing on the old Chris and 75 feet of railing and toe rails on the Pearson, Gary was up to the task and had plenty of experience.

Front door

Looks pretty tricky doesn’t it, with all those little curly q’s and everything.  But all you have to do is sand down the flat area, scuff up the really dark areas and you are ready to varnish.  But the sanding alone took 3 or 4 days…..per side :).  Ya know the neighbors didn’t spend that much time sanding, but they didn’t have the Captain of the Touch of Class working on their door, now did they?

Well after all the sanding was done, Gary was ready to apply the varnish

Gary in a Tarp

Lookin good there Hermes :).  Well he might look funny but he did an excellent job on the door AND he kept his clothes clean!

The finished productThen we found this neat turtle to hide the spot where the old door chime went

Now, not to be outdone, I was given the task of cleaning up and repainting some of the condo mascots.  Mr. Frog and Mr. Heron, they look awful!

So sad 😦

After much sanding, but not 4 days worth ;), and much painting, the job was done

Mr. Frog – So Handsome 🙂

Mr. Heron, I’m watching you Lizard!

Pretty good for a lowly Admiral, huh?  See, Gary’s not the only one with talents.

We also had a section of dirt between the two buildings that looked pretty bare.  Gary got some plants from a friend of ours who was thinning out her herd.  So he planted these

Pretty good job there ex-florist.

Wow!  Look at the time.  We need to get going to travel up to Minnesota for the birth of our 2nd Grandchild. See you later!