Before and After

I don't have the energy to say much. We painted our asses off this weekend, and even hired an out of work friend to help us yesterday (smartest thing we've done in a while). We finished all the priming and then did the entire first coat of paint. Unfortunately it will need a second coat, but such is life. That will go fast, and then we have to paint the trim and a few roof spots and we're done.

Before:


After:

Yay.

Priming and other endeavors

We had a 3 day weekend, with Friday off, so that we could join my family in sprinkling my dear Auntie's ashes. We embarked from Alameda and sprinkled her ashes just past the Golden Gate where her DH was laid to rest. Afterward we had a long and leisurely family dinner with drinks and it was a lovely day. Her official memorial is in two weeks.

Otherwise....we primed. Yes at long last some actual color is there to behold, albiet a couple of shades lighter then the topcoat will be. It looks lovely considering it's only prime....or maybe that's just because the surface it covered was so truly horrific.

We got the garage wall and half of the front of the house covered with the prime. It has to be cut in first of course, which is a bit time consuming. But we are JUICED now that the very slow and horrible parts of painting are over and we've reached the fun part! DH has band practice tonight so I will be finishing priming the windows and then tomorrow we'll try to knock out the rest of the house front...hopefully by midday saturday we'll be starting on the top coat. Could it be that we'd be done by the end of next weekend? (not counting the window trim /sigh)

We'd have gotten the entire front done had we not taken a much needed day off yesterday. I went to Faire as planned and it was quite fun as always. Great company and yummy beer, rum and foodies. I also scored some excellent loot - smelly soap, yummy teas, new perfume oils, a lovely picture for framing, and a new green ren skirt. I'd been eyeing green skirts for some time. I love my current costume which the lovely Seamstrix Art fashioned for me, but it's been some years now that I've been wearing it and I wanted to spice things up or have an alternative option to choose from, especially since in the last few years I attend more then one faire. The skirt I selected would look lovely as a new overskirt for my current costume, would work nicely as an underskirt for the belly dancing costume I'm putting together, and would also be versatile should I choose to create a new ren costume of a different flavor in the future - I've often thought of doing something either hunts-woman or celtic themed and the new skirt would work well for either.

I may attend again on the last weekend, depends on how things are going. But if I don't I cannot complain of being bereft of the joys of the shire.

Check!

Final coat on the eaves, gutters and roof of porch overhang - CHECK! We busted ass and got them finished over the last two days. There are some fascia that remains (easy compared to eaves) that requires being on the rooftop to do. So DH will be working on that tomorrow (I don't go on the roof, I don't like it). I'll be doing some touch ups today and believe it or not this means we can start with the house primer this weekend!! The house primer is tinted dark, just a shade or so lighter then the house paint, so even though it's primer, it will be a dramatic step. Overjoyed! The end almost seems in sight now. And of course I'm taking a day off this weekend...but whatever I deserve it, and I'm going to FAIRE! I *heart* faire. Huzzah!

Eave-il

Greetings bloglings...I'm afraid another weekend and come and gone. And what, you ask, do I have to show for it? Sadly, much less then I'd hoped. It does seem that everything takes quite longer then we plan for. The good news is that I've completed the first topcoat of paint on the eaves and gutters. The bad news is that the second coat is only about a quarter done, and we'd scheduled to have it done by the end of the weekend.

Further good news is that the second coat goes much faster then the first coat. Further bad news is that my right wrist has taken a large dump on me. It's been bothering me a little ever since last weekend when we used the sprayer. Something about holding the trigger constantly on that large vibrating tool (shuusshh...you guys are dirty, honestly) aggrivated my wrist. It hasn't been too bad over the last week, but Saturday after about 4 hours of painting I realized that I had a problem.

This latest development is very dissapointing. Not only did it slow my own progress significantly...the things I would normally do during "down time"...e.g. working on painting inside or playing video games...were off limits because they'd only aggrivate it further. After some resistance I went to the store and bought a carpal tunnel wrist brace so that I could try to get some more work done without making matters totally worse. I hate the idea of wearing the brace, I have this fear of becoming dependant on things like that...I know a certain someone like that. But enough of that, because no one really takes that kind of talk seriously anyhow.

It's still achey today and I'm a little worried about working (keyboard and mouse), but I've brought the darned brace to work and plan on treating it otherwise with advil and ice.

I'd like to close this morning with a wee poem:

Ode to my Stalker

Oh stalker, I hear of your passing by
I blame you not for your curiosity
I'm told of your waving and smiling
Enjoying the sight of our monstrosity

Why do you not stop for tea?
Your driving on I can't understand
Could it be that you truly fear
We'd put a paintbrush in your hand?

Realism bites

Okay, so I have created a schedule. Not my usual one where I assume we can get 5 times more stuff done then we actually can. This one is realistic, accounting for other things that are going on and how we never do anything as fast as I'd like. This schedule shows us finishing painting the house around October 12th.

I suppose that's okay, it's on the two of us and we only have weekends plus about 1.5hours to work most weeknights. But it's kind of discouraging. I'd hoped to get more done this year. I haven't even started my winter seedlings or prepped my beds for the winter crops. At this rate we won't get the front yard done this year for sure. Or the fence. Or most of the things on the list. So I'm trying to let go.

If we finish the paining by mid October, then I'm hoping we can handle the Master "suite" (for lack of a better word) by year end. That's the next most important section to be done. And if we can finish that, then I suppose I'll be satisfied and leave the other projects for another time.

Welcome to the Maskerade

So last weekend I woke up bright and early Saturday morning and masked everything. All the windows and doors. We had (as planned) purchased a small paint sprayer to prime the eaves with. We had to exchange it (not as planned) because apparantly we bought a model that will not spray latex paint. We also didn't get any further work done on Saturday mostly because I was trying to figure out how to use the damned thing and besides, poor DH was down for the count with food poisoning all that day (also not as planned).

Sunday he felt slightly better and we used the new sprayer to prime all the eaves and the ceiling of the porch. It worked quite well, contrary to horrific reviews we'd read on it. The thing with this little sprayer is that you MUST follow the directions and you MUST clean it periodically or no dice. It's pretty tiring to use however, my arms started to get very sore, and my right wrist hasn't felt quite right since, especially when using a computer mouse.

As you can see above, even the prime is an improvement over the horrific, peeling, rotten mauve that was accosting my eye-balls previously. I don't believe we'll use the sprayer to to the top coat however. Despite the success of the priming experience, the extensive masking and cleaning that is involved with using the sprayer is almost not worth it IMO. It served its purpose and the coat of prime got up in all the little cracks of the eaves where the oreo cookies were coming out.

I've already begun on the top coat as well...by hand. We're going with white at DH's insistance, though I kind of think that a dark chocolate brown on the gutters would be nicer. We'll see how it goes. Unfortunately it is clear already that we'll need two coats of the paint despite the prime underneath. /sigh. I swear to you this paint job will never be done. Ever.

In other fronts: last week on vacation Gypsy Junk and I canned something like 9 pounds of my fresh grown tomatoes from my garden. We came out with just under 6 jars (see above) and it was good fun.

It's not fun to be back at work. I have a new project which will be very challenging and we are going through the usual (for this year) shakeups with the latest development being a new CEO.

The worst of all news, which most of you who read here already know, is that my darling Auntie died Sunday from brain/lung cancer. I've been terribly sad, and now I'm feeling rather numb. Oh yes, another funeral to plan for our family. Far more then our fair share IMO. She was such a really neat person too...tons of class and compassion and intelligence and strength. She had a very interesting history, perhaps I'll speak more of it here later. I hope that somewhere in the great beyond she and my dad are sharing a bottle of port together.

Ouchie

I'm sore from all this painty work. The rule of painting the outside of a house is: soffets and facia (eaves and the little strips along the roof) first, then cut in the house color (around the windows, base and eaves), then paint the house color, then do the rest of the trim last. So we started with priming the eaves, with the plan of following that with painting the eaves with the top coat, then moving on. However I'm running into an issue already. Some of our eaves are rotten in places that you replace when you replace the roof, which we aren't doing until after Uncle Sam pays us next year. And our roof is okay for now but was laid improperly on top of several old layers of rotten roof. So where the edge of the eave meets the gutter is an ugly dirty gap that isn't supposed to be there, and the back of the gutter and the front of the eave needs to be painted there. And when you run the brush along it, lots of junk that looks like Oreo cookies falls out...gets in your hair, your freshly spread paint, and on the brush. It's super icky and not at all good.

So the solution? I told DH that I want to spray the eaves instead of hand painting them. We were leaning away from spraying because we've been told by experts that it's not the best method for stucco (doesn't get the paint in the texture well enough), plus you have to worry about masking things better, getting paint on your roof, your car, your neighbor's car etc. So our plan is to borrow a paint sprayer this weekend from a friend, and spray the eaves and the eaves only. We will still handpaint the gutters (to save the roof from overspray) and the trim, and will still roll the house. I think this will solve the icky oreo cookie gutter problem.

I'm a little nervous about using the sprayer. I have a feeling this is going to be something that I make DH do...don't look at me that way, he'll enjoy it! I'll take care of the masking of the windows and maybe start cutting in or priming trim while he's busy spraying. :D

Is it ever gonna be done? Like, ever? Ever?