Back to workin' on the house

Ever since my fabulous real estate agent said, oh look you might have shutters painted shut here on the first floor in the bay window, I've been dying to strip the "molding" around the first floor windows and find out. I decided my summer project would be to strip the paint around the bay window. Even if I don't have shutters back there, having the real wood show through would be more beautiful anyway. What a mess. I don't understand why anyone would paint 15 layers of paint over such beautiful wood. This house must have been amazing back in the day. Everywhere where I find the original stuff, it's gorgeous. Remember the banister? Beautiful Mahogany.
After two evenings of lots of orange stripper stuff, lots of scraping, then sawing, because the shutters were actually nailed opened at one point, my hard work paid off:
I do indeed have beautiful shutters stuck in the walls there. How could anyone ever! paint these open!? The insides haven't been touched - there are cobwebs and a little dust, but I think if I just wipe them down they will be as beautiful as they were to begin with. I also found a lottery ticket from 1983. Wonder if it's still good - or even worth something. Would that be terrific!? And another cool thing is that the shutters are in two halves. Top half and bottom half. So the top half could be open for light, the bottom half closed for privacy. I can't tell you how excited I am about these.
But before I can really enjoy them, I have to finish stripping them. That's going to be a lot of work. At lease now I know there will be a big reward when I'm finished. Yay!
In other news, I finished my other sock. Yep, on Sunday in 90 degree sweltering humidity I sat here knitting. But now, I am all set for November. Problem is, I don't know what to knit now.
Oh, and by the way, I did buy the gold shoes.
What do you think... are they me?

Oh and PS: Jeff's back. (of the fabulous bathroom). He's going to fix the leak on the third floor and pull rotten wood off everywhere and make things look good and be airtight again. Sigh, I don't have enough to pay him for everything that needs to be done, but at least its a start. I've got to look into that lottery ticket.
And then next week that lucky duck is going backpacking through Yosemite. I haven't been to Mammoth for too long. (that's the back side of Yosemite - our summer family vacation place) I should go back.