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.