craftsman.: another fine day to paint.

Uhh, I should not stay up until 2am the night before I am supposed to be out painting my house by 9am. I think I woke up at about 8:55 and five minutes later Matthew knocked on my front door (props to him for getting onto the front porch sans any stairs). Uhh ... good morning Matthew! He had gotten coffee for himself at Meg's. Then Trevor came by with coffee in hand. Damn them! I needed to make some - did and got rolling soon thereafter.

It was cloudy to begin - even thinking it might rain even though the forecast was supposed to be sunny (to Matthew's credit he said it wouldn't rain but I reminded him he also sports his glacier glasses during cloudy climbs in anticipation of the sun coming out). But we grabbed ladders, paint trays, buckets, rollers, brushes. These guys are both contractors. Well, Matthew is. But they both built their own houses from the foundation up. They rule. And we rocked it. I worked on finishing up the priming I underestimated the day before while they got to work painting underneath the rafters on every side of the house.

Around one o'clock or so I made a run to Don's Drive-In to grab some lunch for all of us. Then Dana showed up and I put her to work priming the trim board that ran underneath all the rafter tails all around the house while us dudes all sat on the porch eating lunch and watching her work (she had lunch before she came up). We were wondering what anyone passing by might have thought. Dana joked she should start crying to increase the dramatic effect.

Then the sun came out.

And after three weeks of me prepping scraping sanding scraping sanding filling caulking scraping sanding we started putting on some f'ing colour. It started out rough trying it with just a brush and on the crap siding some lame moron put on instead of even trying (come on I figure at least try) to match the original beautiful fir siding. Like it was going on pretty thin. At which point the sprayer debate arose with Dana and Trevor siding with having me cave and going out to rent one while Matthew and I arguing it would be too much hassle and likely - in the hands of someone who has never used one (umm, that would be me) - cause a lot of overspray on all of the trim that the two of them spent the morning painting.

In the end the homeowner rules. I guess. That and we switched gears to try loading a roller with paint and using that to apply it. Then I would follow with a brush to get the nice effect of the brush strokes on the siding and to even it out. And it worked quite nicely and looks like it'll go on in one coat. I will have to come back and cut in around all the trim but that's OK. And so rolling with that plan we started to make some progress and in maybe 3 hours or a little less had the longest side of the house complete and were starting to wrap around to the front of the house when the pizza kid arrived.

"Whoa, it looks nice. You doing this as a job or does one of you own it?"

"Uhh, yeah I own it and thanks. But to be fair it looked pretty crappy before so any change is a step in the right direction."

Then I tipped him and sent him on his way and for the first time in a long time I retired from painting before the point of having to switch on a headlamp to keep working. Meaning it was still light, but we washed up and headed over to Trevor's to have some pizza.

So some pics then of what happens all in a day's worth of working on one's home with a few fabulous friends ...