Excellent progress and improving weather

January 30, 2010 (fingers still aren't used to typing 2010)
Peoria, AZ

What more could you ask for?  Life is good here in the desert.  I've made good progress with preparing the outside of the house (well, three sides of it anyway) for painting, although I've got a long way to go.

Painting a house is kind of like a lot of projects we got involved in back in the working days.  It's a pretty straightforward concept and the steps are easy to understand: prep, paint, clean up, Miller time.  Unfortunately, once you start actually doing things, all sorts of little details start appearing.

The primary obstacle to painting was the eaves, specifically the cheap plywood and poor painting techniques the builder used.  What watered-down paint did get applied to the underside of the roof sheathing under the eaves was peeling quite badly.  When I started scraping (old school, like with a scraper, since the spaces between the roof trusses are too small for power tools), much of the first layer of the sheathing just peeled off and crumbled away.  I wrapped up the scraping yesterday afternoon, thankfully.  Always try to get the hardest part of any job out of the way first, I say.

I sanded the fascia trim while I was slowly moving the ladder around the house 16" at a time, and that's where "scope creep" started.  The wood was never primed and a rough sanding took it right down to bare wood.  OK, so that'll require two coats of paint instead of one.  And there are quite a few places where the stucco (I hate stucco) needs patching.  Hmmm, the paint on the foundation looks like it's peeling; that'll require some wire brush work and priming as well.  Hey, there's a bird's nest up here where the house eaves meet the garage.  Looks like we'll need wire mesh installed to keep the birds out.  Oops, another nest up over the front foyer; more wire.  I wonder how well the paint will adhere to those galvanized pipes that were installed to run natural gas to the stove and grill.  OK, I'll clean and prime them first.  Uh, what's this area where the window trim butts up to the fascia?  No, stucco is not a sealant, so that'll all have to be removed and sealed properly before painting.

So, you get the idea, my "project plan" has grown to about 40 discrete steps, several of which have to be done in the right order.  Some things never change: I'm just a planner at heart.  I really do enjoy figuring all this out.  Scraping under eaves?  Not so much.

Several neighbors and passersby have commented directly or indirectly that I'm nuts to do this myself.  On the other hand, I'll save $1,500 (buys a lot of diesel) but more importantly, there's no way I could get someone to really do all the scraping, sealing, and other prep work correctly, so it would be peeling again in a year or two.  Plus, it keeps me out of trouble and it's the perfect time of year (low-to-mid-60s, light breezes - El Niño aside) for this kind of project.

And, speaking of weather, it's been pretty nice since the last round of storms passed through.  I'm a little disappointed that we didn't get over to Quartzsite to catch up with RVing friends (Geri, not so much - about Q, not friends), but downpours in the desert aren't our thing.  Thursday was kind of interesting, with clouds on the horizon in three directions all day.  Even later in the day when the clouds increased, we could still see blue sky through them.  As we were walking the pups, Geri and I both commented that the sky looked ripe for a rainbow.  Well, not five minutes later, the setting sun dropped below the clouds to the west and we were graced with a perfect rainbow stretching cleanly all the way across the arc, plus a great sunset.  As we finished our walk, we got hit with a few raindrops ("showers" in AZ terminology) and the rainbow turned to a double.  We quickened our pace heading for home to grab the camera, but the double had faded by the time I could get the shot.  It was still pretty, though.

Otherwise, it's been life as usual.  Yesterday, we helped our neighbor across the street, Clisby, with some PC updates, and we did wings and 'ritas last night when another neighbor, Mary Ann, joined us for dinner.  Geri's been busy organizing excess stuff for a proposed yard sale in the spring (why is it that two people need over 50 wine glasses, anyway?) and arranging for a carpet cleaner and house cleaner (we don't need someone on a schedule, but we do need a team to come in and scrub the place down from time to time) to get in here in early-February.

Today, I "took the day off".  I actually started reading the new Dan Brown book.  Well, it's not new any more since it came out last September or something like that but, hey, that's pretty good for me these days.  Tomorrow: back to the paint prep...