I Washed Brushes!!

Wooo-Hooo! Washing brushes is a sure indication that I’ve finished painting this section. I am fired up to do the rest of the house, but it will most definitely be in smaller chunks. This one section took me 3 weeks to do. The rest of the house has been broken down in to 8 sections with each one taking me from 1 to 3 weeks, depending on the size and complexity.

There will be a few detour projects along the way, but the road has been mapped. The goal is to have the whole house painted by October. I should make a map of the house with the different sections marked off. Everyone can print it out and get a little bobble-head Petch on a suction cup and track the progress at home. Wouldn’t that be fun?

Yesterday I said, “Screw it” and I went ahead and did the frieze and soffit with the ladder. It was a white-knuckle adventure, let me tell you. I had to extend the 32-foot ladder allllll the way up to reach those lofty heights. The ladder gets very bendy when it’s extended like that. The whole thing flexes noticeably with every move. To complicate matters, to avoid moving the ladder so much, I was painting 3 colors at a time. The frieze background, soffit, and fascia are all Basil. The frieze scroll work is Clary Sage. And the crown molding is Fired Brick.

I was able to reach about a 6-foot section at a time without moving the ladder, and it took a minimum of 3 trips up and down the ladder for each section. One trip for each color. Also, because all the paint was wet I had to carefully cut in each color with out disturbing the color I had just laid down. Very time consuming. It took me about 4-hours to do that part of the house.

I had thought about getting a boom lift or scissor lift for this but there are problems (aren’t there always). Because of the trees, power lines, and other obstacles I can’t get a boom lift to this area without renting a monster boom lift. The really huge ones are hundreds and hundreds of dollars a day and I would have to put it in my neighbors yard. Not going to happen. An all terrain scissor lift would work here but I can’t use it on the north side of the house because of a nasty slope in the yard. I could maybe shim it with wood, but I just wouldn’t feel comfortable being 25-feet up in the air like that.

The solution was to do this area with the ladder and do the rest of the frieze and soffit with the boom lift. I’m going to reserve it for May 23rd (I think). There is a small one I can get for $160 for a 24 hour rental, and I can tow it home myself. I’ll just spend one day going all around the house doing the frieze and soffit. At the same time I will also strip the fish scale shingles on the attic gables and maybe get them primed if there is time.

As a test I’m trying to paint on of the gables by hanging out the little window. I stripped one down to bare wood today, and tomorrow I will make a few minor repairs and then primer. I can reach pretty much everything from the window. The front gable is bigger, though, so it will be more of a challenge. I may spend some time on it over the next week or so to see how much I can get without the boom lift. Also tomorrow, I mix paint.