Painting and Staining aren't so bad after all...

I've always disliked painting. It's been my least favourite part of any project. Trying to paint around trim or windows, keeping the paint from getting on the ceiling or the walls and cleaning brushes have always frustrated and annoyed me.

This past month I've done more painting that I have in the past 5 years. This weekend was a painting/staining marathon for me. I did windows, doors, trim and then to finish it off I stained the deck as well.

At the start of the weekend I thought that'd I'd be so sick of painting that I'd never want to pick up a paintbrush again for the next 5 years.

But come Sunday afternoon it didn't seem so bad. Cleaning brushes isn't so bad after all. As long as you don't get too crazy over the trim it doesn't seem to be too difficult. Hmm.

I haven't painted for two days now and I kind of miss it. I'll look around for something to touch up tonight...

Some work done

Finished painting the frame for the bathroom window and garage door last night. Didn't have time to pull off the door and scrape/prime it. Had to run to HD instead to pick up more supplies for other fixups.

Stain and screws to patch up the deck, construction adhesive to fix some failing trim, light bulbs for the vanity.

A while ago we got a letter in the mail from HD saying 'In thanks for your recent purchase, here is a gift card'. I figured it was a marketing stunt to get us in the door and the card would be $1.00 or something like that. When I used it last night I found out it was a $150 card!!! Glad I didn't lose it. Turns out it is from my Christmas tool purchases where they had the spend X dollars get a gift card for Y dollars. It would have been nice if they would have indicated somewhere in the letter that was what the card was for...

No 'after' pictures as I couldn't find the camera this morning.

Windows and Doors

Back to work on painting the windows and doors over the weekend. Found some nice surprises with the window and door on the North side of the house. Both had significant rot that needed to be cut out and replaced. On the right you can see one side of the door trim that was rotten. I cut out the lower 6 inches and replaced it with good wood. Joshua gave me a hand nailing in the new trim.

The window was just as bad on each side, and I also ended up replacing the entire piece of trim at the bottom of the window. After nailing the good wood in place I finished off the joints with some bondo to blend in the new pieces better, than caulked, primed and put one finish coat on. Tonight will be the last finish coat, but I'm only half done.

Because of the bad fish flies I couldn't pull off the door or the sliding window for strip / painting, but now that the fish flies are gone (temporarily) I'll pull those things off and get to work on them. I should be able to strip / sand / prime them both tonight.

Joshua's Swing

Rosemary picked up a small child's swing on the weekend for $2 at a garage sale. Good deal, but we needed a few bits of hardware to put it together.

While at Home Depot to pick up the paint for the shed I searched through the hardware aisle to come up with the different bits to hang the swing from one of the deck rafters.

First, into the rafter go two 3/8" zinc plated closed loop bolts, each rated for 250lbs (non-moving) load. To attach the swingset chain I used a couple of turnbuckles, also zinc-plated and rated for 250lbs. I used the turnbuckles and closed loop as I was concerned about the chain slipping off a hook.

The two big hooks on the swing clip into the bottom of the chain and the swing is ready to go. Joshua loves his new swing and the extra chain means he gets a few moments of zero-g at the top of the arc :) (check out his cool transparent hand!)

Shed Painting Done?

Got home last night at 7:45 and put a second coat on most of the trim. I didn't think the main panels of the shed needed to be recovered, but looking at the photos maybe they do. I've got more pressing things to fix around the house (windows) but if I have time I'll probably roll another coat on the main body of the shed.

I removed the doors to paint the trim and they are now drying in the shed. A bit of rain today but nothing too bad. I'll put the doors back on tonight and be done with it.

Scraping off the loose paint and just priming/painting those areas saved a bunch of time. From 10ft away it looks fine, closer and you can see the paint level change between scraped/non-scaped. Sanding would probably have cleaned some of that up, but it's a shed not a piece of furniture.