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
  

A plan is more than one thing ...

.. to go wrong.

I always like to cite evidence in support of my positions.  In this case it is Terry Pratchett in 'A Hat Full of Sky".  In this epic tome the Wee Free Men comment "Now we have a Plan, all we got tae do is work out what tae do."

After our conversation with Dean the Paint the next steps were to work out

• how we felt about the blue paint we had chosen; and
• how much paint we needed.

The first step was easily solved by painting one of the purlings for the deck.  This is the part of the paint job which we will see the most.  We got a sample pot of the colour and Frances ripped into a pole outside our bedroom window.  We both thought it looked great, drawing in some colours from the lavender we have got growing here and also there around the place.

The second step involved a fair bit of measuring things and putting them in a spreadsheet to calculate surface areas.  The final stages of that involved:

• guessing how much those calculations were in error (always going to be a greater-than-zero outcome); and
• using the result to determine the volume of paint we needed (with the advice of Dean the Paint using info supplied by the paint manufacturers.

We did this and the bottom line came out to a round $1,000 (after Dean gave us a small - but always welcome - discount).  Needles to say we then came up with a few odds and sods that removed the roundness of the figure.  However we ended up with:

• 30 l of deck paint;
•  8 l of blue paint
• 20 l of ceiling white; and
•  4 l  of stuff for the window frames and related areas.

We had acquired some masking tape but almost immediately found the amount acquired to be inadequate.  As it was the Monday after New Year Magnet Mart was shut so we used the services of Bunnings (presumably under a different industrial agreement) to get some more tape and also gap filler, having had a more detailed exploration of the joins between various elements of the house.

In fact I have decided that masking tape is governed by a variant of Parkinson's law.   It would be worded along the lines of "The length of maskable borders expands to require 1 more roll of masking tape than you have purchased."   It appears that the law renews itself as work proceeds, so that after buying 2 more rolls a third is required.  Purchase that and walk straight back into the store to get #4!

Blue Poles

When we were contemplating the colour that we would use for the blue stuff Frances tried it out on one of the uprights.  It looked rather splendid so we decided it was the go.

The blue colour we chose has a tinge of lavender in it.   This is generated by the presence of some magenta in the mix.  This separates out when the pant isn't stirred a great deal leading to very pretty effects as we stirred it.

Having got one blue pole led us  to start by doing all the uprights as the first part of the project so that they looked consistent. 

 


Apparently some dude by the name of Pollock came up with Blue Poles for the title of one of his works but I reckon ours look just as nice.  I also recall a friend using that as the model for the decor of his dunny (aka Bog/loo/bathroom/kazi).  Not a good place to go after several of his good wines.There will be more of Mr Pollock towards the end of this blog.

Here are some views of how they look with the job done!

Sam, the ceiling needs painting

Those with a long memory my remember a series of cartoons from about the 1970s with that title.  They were a trifle rude (as shown in this recent blog by a professional photographer) and you won't find any of that sort of stuff here, unless of course a chance to portray some rudeness comes along.

We of course knew that the ceiling above our deck needed painting, especially the rafters which were still in the raw state.  I presume this was due to either:

• lethargy on behalf of all previous owners; or
• some misguided intention to achieve a mock Tudor impact.

I have some empathy with the latter view, having a memory of painting the rafters in the verandah of our house, on Cedar Avenue Brighton SA, black while the tin above them was done in yellow to prevent rust.  Jeez, one does some daft things when young.

Fortunately we are now more mature and planned to do the whole lot in basic white.  I did the flat bits with a roller while Frances (being more precise) does the rafters.

The high blue yonder

This covers painting the gutters etc.

I have already commented on some bits of this stage in reviewing our planning. Most of it was merely tiresome in shifting the ladders etc around.  The final stage of dealing with the gutters and fascias on the Eastern end of the house was quite challenging because:

• it required the ladder to be on full extension (note the bend in it); 
• the ground was very uneven ; and
• a fence around the garden bed there got in the way.
  

Windows are the eyes of the house. (pt1)

The title of this page comes from one of the many real estate agents with whom we have dealt over the years.  If that is the case this house was an albino.  About halfway through the stage Frances commented that she didn't think the woodwork had been repainted at any stage since it had been built: for some of it that means 20 years rather than the 3 years I referred to, which is our period of occupation.  (That now seems amazing: it seems like yesterday we moved in!)

This is how the windows looked before being repainted (but with the masking tape in place ).  There are many little bits of wood and they didn't behave consistently when being redone.  In some cases a piece would soak up paint like a straw in a milkshake.  The piece next door would almost repel the paint.

A further issue was the number of planes (ie faces in the woodwork) that needed to be covered.  In an area of the sunroom which I did there were approximately 16 faces around some of the panes of glass.  To say the least this was very fiddly.    (I only did the high bits of this work, as Frances is more temperamentally suited to 'fiddly work'.  She is however averse to bendy ladders!)

Although the job had some problems the payoff was rather great in terms of the improvement in appearance .  Contrast the image

 to the right with that above.

Windows are the eyes of the house. (pt2)

The first part of the business about windows related to those in the original part of the house.  Frances looked after those while I did gutters. 

The reason I did the gutters was that it involved a ladder. So when we got to the windows in the extension quite a lot of them needed a ladder also.  Thus I got to play with them.

A slight annoyance was that the windows were split into small areas for some unknown reason - probably an architect's fancy at the time.  This meant it took quite a while,  and several metres of masking tape, to get ready for this exercise.

The image shows the main offenders (about half the total area) before I started on them.  The nifty reflection of the Yellow Box is a bonus.. 


I think because the weather got a bit damp (or possibly it got too hot - I can't remember which) after we finished applying the paint we left the masking tape in position for a while.  This meant it stuck like poop to a hairy blanket.  My estimate is that it took me better than 5 hours (with a lot of use of a paint scraper) to get the tape off.  Also, there had been a few runny bits and they had dried like something that dries very hard.  Turps did nothing to get it off; meths wasn't much better.  Frances tried Eucalyptus oil, which did work but would be damn expensive.  Eventually I tried unleaded petrol and that seemed to work well.

Haul the decks

The (penultimate stage of the process was to re-stain the deck which runs around the house.  As the close of the project nears I felt as though all out Christmasses were gathering and thus decided to use a Xmassy title (but couldn't work out how to continue it with something about "Hows of Bolly").

In fact this stage of the process was remarkably straight foward.  Perhaps due to having purchased an aplicator - rather like a cross between a Merino wether and a squeeze mop. It certainly made applying the stain or whatever it was called very easy.  I think I took less than 2 hours to put on the second coat.

That being said, as with every other part of the project the preparations took about as long as actually doing the work.  Fortunately we got away without having to use any ing masking tape.  However it was necessary to 

1. powerwash all the deck;
2. use a sanding block to sort out the residue from other stages not whupped by step 1;
3. use a hammer and centre punch to discipline some errant nails; and 
4. sweep everything severely since the time required for steps 2 and 3 partially undid the good stuff achieved in step 1!

The most dramatic moment was when my hand slipped on the handle of the 10l can of paint and about a litre dived a) into the tray and b) splashed up all over my face.  Of course, with Murphy's law driving everything,  this was one of the few times I wasn't wearing safety googles and my $1300 spectacle lenses got a good gloop of stain.  My other concern was that it may have got my eyes (worth at least $0.45 if accompanied by a $5 cup of coffee).  Fortunately none of this seems to have happened.

The whole process with the deck was done over 4 days and probably took no more than 8 hoursof actual work.  As with everything else the effect is pretty damn good.

Getting down

The last stage of this project (other than the tidy up bit, which will not be trivial) is to do the fascia boards below the deck.  In our original planning this was just part of the blue bits.  In fact as far as I (Martin) am concerned it is turning into a major subproject.

This is mainly because what I am handling is the lowest parts of the woodwork on the Northern side of the house: it is exposed to the prevailing wind (and thus rain) and in full sunlight for most of the day.  In other words it is the most stressed part of the fabric of the woodwork.  Using the Karcher took about 3 hours and it was obvious that a fair bit of paint-scraper and sandpaper action was required after that.  Then we ran out of the blue paint about 30% of the way through this final step (Frances had done 2 coats on the more protected South and West parts of the deck).

The main part of the job has now been finished.  All that is left to do is three sets  of steps and two bits of downpipe.   Two of the sets of steps need some carpentery work done which may turn into an issue because it involves getting a carpenter round to do the work.  Thus far I have made one attempt at phoning a carpenter who didn't return my call.  (In fairness that may be because I left a voicemail on the Telstra voicemail system, and I have never had a returned call from that system.  My next attempt will be to call the guy on his mobile.)

The home straight

Even allowing for the bogus posting dates (to get the posts to follow a narrative order rather than the time they were actually written), it has been a long while I posted on this blog, mainly because we entered a hiatus in getting a carpenter organised to build some new steps which had become a trifle rotten.  However he has arrived early this morning (5 June), filling the drive with utes.  Here is the scene at about 8:30.













And here is the situation at 1630 on the same day.

The wood used is the usual 'treated pine' which has pretty much taken over from Oregon as the construction timber of choice.  It appears that about 20 years ago everyne thought that Oregon was the deluxe timber to use.  It was subsequently discovered that it is also the substrate of choice for most fungi in Australia, and as a result is now strang verboten for external use.  There was quite a bit of sawdust left over and I was thinking of putting it in my worm farm: fortunately I rethought this as a species that chucks a wobbly over bits of onion would probably not greatly enjoy the hetting this added to their diet.

I spent a good bit of 6 June applying the first coat of paint .  The drying time at 13 degrees C will be a bit different to our other painting efforts when it was more like 33 degrees C!   As I was getting close to finishing a few drops of moisture were evident, but fortunately it didn't and still doesn't, look like rain.

On 7 June a second coat of paint was applied and the following two images of the rather spiffy steps were taken.  This is declared to be the end of the project: anything else is maintenance.

Some thoughts on operations

A friend proved that she had done house painting by saying that the job itself (ie waving a tinted brush or roller around) was not too bad.  It was the constant shiting (OK I meant 'shifting, but some typos are too good to pass up) of ladders and drip sheets that was a pain.  Spot on!

When doing the ceilings it was necessary to put masking tape around each rafter as well as at the end of each panel.  I estimated this was 25% of the work  When doing the high gutters PUT IN LINK the ladder had to be shifted approximately 10 times to do a 15 linear metre stretch (and would have been more had Frances not identified a strategy to do 3m with 2 moves of the ladder).

Of course that followed the pressure cleaning of the surfaces using the Karcher sprayer purchased for the purpose.  This is illustrated in the header image: it shows that it is a job that is more enjoyable in Summer than Winter. As a friend said, it beats the daylights out of scrubbing the surfaces to get them clean.  Of course in project planning terms this does mean having to allow another stage in the process  - letting surface dry!

We could then include all the packing up after a session and the cleaning of brushes and rollers etc which easily take 30 minutes for each of us.

Did we include all  this stuff in the original plan?  Of course we didn't.  Fortunately we also didn't reckon on getting so obsessive with our efforts.  Thus we are well in front of our timetable at the moment (8 January) and should have it all done by the end of February.
The situation by 20 January is as follows (note that we are now up to 6 stages!):

• Ceiling and joists: completed about 10 January (about on schedule)
• Blue poles; railings, steps etc:  The blue poles ended up being the first job we did.  That was finished before the end of December.  
• We also decided that the low blue stuff would be left until after we have done the deck  in the expectation that the deck work will splatter on the blue.
• Windows etc: A very fiddly job but we are about 70% of th way through that.  Scheduled for end of February.
• Gutters and high Fascia boards: Finished about 10 January.  Scheduled for mid March.  
• Deck: Shifted up in priority to come before the low blue bits.  Not yet started.
  

One of the secrets is definitely doing a solid chunk of work so that you can see how good it looks/  This gives the inspiration to keep on going.