A plan is just one more ...

... thing to go wrong.

We decided that after three years we needed to paint the outside of the house.  In the past our practise had been to hire someone to do this, when we had rented the house out (and thus it became a deductible expense against our rent- and due to the laws about negative gearing against the taxes on our salary also).  This time we couldn't do that so it came down to us to do the yakka.

The first stage of this was drawing up a broad plan, so that we had some targets.  This was seen as a Good Thing since it should keep us motivated with intermediate targets rather than the awesome prospect of spending an entire Summer up a ladder (or two ladders on occasion).

The first part of this was to split the job  into 4 chunks based on the colour of the stuff to be redone:

• Blue bits - essentially the gutters, fascias; supports therefore, and barge boards;
• White bits - the ceiling of the deck including the rafters;
• Window frames and other rusty coloured bits; and
  
• The deck itself.
  

Our target time frames were as follows (note that there are 5 entries here rather than 4):

• Ceiling of verandah and joists: 2 weeks, to be completed by mid January.
• Blue poles, steps and rails etc: 4 weeks to be completed by mid February.
• Wooden window frames etc: 2 weeks, end February
• Gutters and high fascias: 2 weeks, mid March
• Deck: no time set but rated as 'last stage.
  

Step 2 was to choose the colour for the blue bits and to find out what products were available.  We decided to give some action to a Queanbeyan business and headed off to a paint specialist in that fair town.  Obviously a few more people should have patronised them in the past as they were closed up.  So we walked across the road and into Magnet Mart where we spent some time talking to Dean the paint man.

We will get on to some more planning in a further post.  For the time being I'll discuss an urban legend from my youth.  The image to the left gives a hint about this.  Basically we were brought up to belief that Mr Hitler was a painter - with the sneering riposte that he was a house painter not a potential member of the Royal Academy!  The wikipedia article about him seems to dismiss this idea, saying that he was actually a dauber, but who wanted to be an architect.   Since I view architects as somewhere below lawyers (themselves below slime-mould as a lfe form) I am not sure this is a major upgrade.

However this current project has two inputs to the question.

• The first is that if Hitler was a house painter it could well explain his misanthropic and vile nature later in life.  
• Secondly, a person who could plan and organise painting a house should have been able to do a better job of the Russian campaign