grobkuschelig said:
Hi Oliver,
Nice work! Congratulations on finishing in time.
Love the pictures, as always.
But the cigar break is the best of the bunch! Great shot! And earned!
Thanks for the tip regarding Brilliant 2 for Ivy removal. Might come in handy sooner than I‘m hoping.
Let us know how you get along painting today.
Looks like less thunder and lightning today, at least over here in Hessen...
Hi!
Thank you!

Will start working on the update in the next couple of minutes.
Peter_C said:
Curious what the aluminum roll up shutter is for? Security?
We don't have things like that here in the USA. Shutters are very common in France. My French wife says it is a look, and I say they have a high crime rate. In the USA in high crime areas they do use bars on the windows, which are also common in France's bigger cities. I have yet to visit England, but it is near the top of the list
RustE said:
Peter_C said:
Curious what the aluminum roll up shutter is for? Security?
We don't have things like that here in the USA.
...
I’ve seen shutters like that in Ohio for securing businesses after hours. Usually in downtown areas that are not the most pleasant after dark.
Also seen similar storm shutters on the east coast.
leakyroof said:
RustE said:
Peter_C said:
Curious what the aluminum roll up shutter is for? Security?
We don't have things like that here in the USA.
...
I’ve seen shutters like that in Ohio for securing businesses after hours. Usually in downtown areas that are not the most pleasant after dark.
Also seen similar storm shutters on the east coast.
. Anti Zombie Shutters..... [wink]
Hi!
Where do I start? Maybe here: originally the house had wooden roll up shutters for both large window/door fronts facing the backyard. These were installed in all houses when they were built, back then the part of town started to grow significantly but could still be considered rural. The houses across the backyard, our backyards "meet" - are even older and those have cast iron bars in front of the windows because back in the day their backyards were pretty much "endless" - nothing but fields.
At some point we wanted to electrify these roll up shutters and were told there's no way to do this with the old wooden shutters, they are simply to heavy. (Rolling these up at least twice a day was a nice workout ...) So we went with new shutters.
Obviously they are part of our security concept, there's no denying. However our town is definitely not a high crime area.
But we're in a vulnerable spot - some banks whose ATM's were blown up and a lot of owners of new campers/mobile homes/caravans had to learn the hard way. Let's just say you're on the highway faster than the police can dispatch an officer to any given location, unless they're patrolling the area. Once you're on the highway, it's merely an hour before you reach the Netherlands and that's possible in two different directions - at night, with a highly motorized vehicle there's nothing going to stop you. I think it's the same in the US now a days, police won't go into a high speed pursuit unless absolutely necessary to not endanger civilians/themselves?
At least here, no one is going to try to keep up with Audi S-Lines, Mercedes AMG or BMW M series that they never really saw (if at all), are stolen/ or at least have stolen plates and have anything between a 5 to 15 minutes head start and are pretty much exchanged before they cross the border ... For money/ stolen goods at least.
So yeah, we try to keep ourselves and our belongings safe. There's also no denying that while we don't see increasing numbers of crimes, actually they are going down, the crimes itself tend to get more violent with more "unnecessary" physical assaults while they rob you or create a lot of collateral damage (house burned down...) and stuff like that. There have been a couple of disturbing crimes within an area/radius closer than my "comfort zone" - so we step up our game.
But like I said, the shutters have been there forever, we just modernized them. They are primarily used as shades in the summer, they take some load of the AC - and during winter they help save some energy while heating.
The "end game" will be new windows for this house - highly likely with new shutters

- there's no way around it. No matter how our life continues, or if we even will be the ones replacing them. New windows is a must in future.
Kind regards,
Oliver