Finally! All the same color!

Today marked an important milestone in our never-ending project to repaint our home: The north wall of the house is all one color. None of the primer paint is visible!

The glare from the afternoon sun doesn't make it very easy to see, but the color we picked out, Cottage Red, is looking very nice now that I don't have to make a frame with my hands to block out the parts of the siding that weren't painted.

A New Coat of Paint

It's the final coat of paint without the distracting purple primer or any bare boards to muck up the view. I'm very relieved to find it covers very nicely with one coat.

Labor Day Scrape Away - Final Day

It is done. The primer coat, anyway. At this point, we're calling that a significant milestone.

It's humbling to note that, when we began this adventure eighteen days ago, we believed we could have painted the whole house by now. Today, with an entirely different perspective, we'll be happy to have the back of the house sanded and primed before winter. If we can manage to get the top coat on, too, that'll just be icing on the cake. Butter icing. With big, sweet roses.

Labor Day Scrape Away - Final Day

We are just too damned happy to finally be painting instead of scraping and sanding, you wouldn't believe it.

I get to climb the ladder to paint the upper siding panels and B gets to paint the lower panels, because she's a girl. No, that's not it, it's because she's scared to climb the ladder. No, that's not it, either, it's because she possesses a special knowledge of painting ground-level wood siding that I lack. That's it.

This pink Pepto-Bismol-looking color is the priming coat, by the way. The top coat will be a much darker red brick color, and I was assured by the two experts at the paint department of Ace Hardware that it would cover the primer in one coat. If it doesn't, I'm going to bring what's left of the primer back to Ace and dump it on their heads.

It took us about two hours to paint this much of the side, so I think we'll be done by mid-afternoon and I'm lobbying hard for an early end to the work-weekend so we can enjoy the final hours of our extended Labor Day weekend sitting on our butts on the back deck, probably with cold brewskis in our hands.

Labor Day Scrape Away and Pastry-eating Fantasy

VICTORY!

It took every particle of strength I had in me, but I finished sanding the north side of the house.

No fair pointing out the gable is still painted.

It's okay, really, the paint on the gable seems to be bubble-free and unpeeling, so we're going to paint over it and hope for the best.

I picked up a gallon of primer and a couple of paint buckets at the local Ace Hardware store this afternoon and, if all goes according to plan, we'll spend tomorrow afternoon with paint brushes in our hands.

Labor Day Scrape Away and Pastry-eating Fantasy

Holy Crap, This Sucks!

I can't remember the last time I did anything that wore me out like this. Wrapping myself in quilts and lifting weights all day would seem easier.

I started sanding at about two o'clock in the afternoon and finished up just before five, with a fifteen-minute break to stand in front of a fan while I drank all the ice water I could hold.

Those two siding panels right above the windows go on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on, by the way. And on. And on and on. Okay, I'll stop now.

Labor Day Scrape - Day Three

Dammit. I really wanted to finish off that patch above the window on the right, but I just didn't have enough steam left for it.

It's beginning to look a lot like progress ...

The evening's daylight was fading fast as I snapped this shot of the north side of Our Humble O'Bode. I had just finished spending an hour sanding with some heavy grit paper on a belt sander, hoping to extend that straight line of paint-free panels all the way across, but the belt separated when I was still three feet short of my goal. You can just make out, to the right of the ladder, where the sanded panels end and the chipped paint begins.

I can begin to see a light at the end of the tunnel. I plan to do a bit more sanding on Thursday night, and I've taken time off from work Friday and Tuesday to stretch the Labor Day weekend to a full five days. With some persistence and some good weather, I should be able to get this side of the house primed and make a good start sanding the back. (We dangled a ten-dollar-an-hour bribe in front of Tim to see if he'll help scrape paint. Stay tuned.)

Scraping By, Day Two

Does it look like we're making any progress at all? It's getting hard for me to tell.

We've been at it today since about ten or ten thirty. I knocked off at five when I noticed I was getting so punchy that I was gouging more than scraping. My Darling B had the stamina and determination to continue until quarter to six.

I think we've got most of the bubbles popped and the loose paint peeled away. B wants to take another pass at it tomorrow after work to make sure all the rough spots are smoothed out and there aren't any flapping dogears we missed.

Scraping by ...

The first order of business was to scrape off the paint that was bubbling and peeling away from the siding.

I was able to get about this far working on my own from ten until lunch.