I’m taking the week off of work to repaint the outside of our house. Money is tight for everyone these days and instead of dropping five large on someone to just do it for me, I decided to dedicate a week of time in the pursuit of “do it yourself”. I mentioned on Twitter yesterday that what started out as scraping the house turned into rebuilding the back door as an example of how when it comes to home repair, it’s never as easy as just sticking to the plan.
Finding rotted wood while scraping for example turned into a “lost” day as I put the scraper down and set out to rebuild the entire back door.
Today I’m happy to report the entire back of our house is prepped for painting and I was actually able to put paint to brush towards the end of the day. Then there’s that doorbell, which I think is brass, so let me get out the thinner and see if I can restore it to it’s original unpainted state. Several hours later, success and I now have one of the most beautiful doorbells on my back door that no one will ever use!
At this rate, I may have at least two sides of my house prepped for painting by Sunday.
It’s satisfying work, putting the elbow grease back into your largest single asset, but it doesn’t leave much time for keeping up on the events of the day. On the plus side, I’m getting one hell of a tan.
So relevant material may only be as available as the length of time I can use a scraping blade before it dulls. The shaving razor racket has nothing on the scraping blade racket I’m quickly discovering.
Again, apologies to regular readers if words like thinner, primer, and hornets nest replace the usual fare on my blog of politics, primaries, and hornets nests that you’re accustomed to.
I live in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Milwaukee, WI with my wife Jen, our daughter Emerson, and sons Carter and Colton.
“Again, apologies to regular readers if words like thinner, primer, and hornets nest replace the usual fare on my blog of politics, primaries, and hornets nests that you’re accustomed to.”
Brilliant!
Sometimes just simple non-controversial topics are just as (or more) entertaining….good luck!!!!
Good luck. As you’ve already noted, a week is not enough time to paint a house—-something unexpected always comes up. At least the weather, so far, has been favorable—not too hot and no rain.
Don’t go the Wagner Power Painter route. Even the really good, $300 one is pretty much useless, unless you have gobs of experience. For the kind of siding you have, I recommend a good sized paint pad, after a quick primer. Good luck!
Really? I’ve heard good things about them. How would pads work on a house like ours with cedar siding? You’d miss the underside every time and have to go back with a brush or roller.
Get a carbide blade scraper from Home Depot. I can’t remember the brand but when you see it you’ll know what I mean. Puhl’s True Value might have them too. It has two handles on it so you can really bear down on it. One handle is the usual and the other is over the blade. Before you scrape an area, set any nail heads sticking up or you’ll chip the blade.