Wednesday, September 10, 2008

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.



1 comment:

Gypsy Junk Knits said...

I stalked your house this weekend. Which inevitably had me laughing at your taped over windows, imaging a terrible farce on your neighbors where you placed tin foil in the windows after you painted your lovely house. but it was a short lived farce.
Sorry about Jeanne, I think that's a rather lovely image of your dad and her throwing back a bottle of port way up in the clouds. I bet they would like that.