This week Ben threw his hat over the fence. I mean, he made a commitment to something I have been hoping for since the day we moved into our house. What I have been hoping for for the last 13 years, is new exterior house paint. Not only new exterior house paint in a can, but new exterior house paint completely brushed all over the outside of my house. I know it is going to happen because the old paint on my house is nearly gone, and the new is sitting in the garage stirred and ready for a sunny day.
For the last 13 years, my house color has been gray. Do I need to describe the ridiculous choice of color made by the previous owner to paint a house near Seattle gray? Probably, she was wondering what color to paint the house and happened to thoughtfully look up while she was thinking , "Hmmm, what color should I choose?" Of course, the first color that came to mind was gray--she was looking up! What other color would pop into your mind, if you happened to thoughtfully look up in Seattle?
Anyway, our new color is a sort of brown...yeah, I know, that is not much more exciting than gray. But, it is a little more cheerful as it makes you think of chocolate milk instead of months of rain and cold. And we do need to fit in with the other earthy-colored split-levels that surround us.
With all these able bodies around with not much to do this summer (our sons), we decided to let them help us with the painting. Our sons get to learn how to paint a house, so that someday when they want to paint their own houses (or get a job), they will already know how to do it because they practiced on ours. What an opportunity for them! And we are not even going to charge them for their housepainting education. AND, we are even going to let them live here and enjoy their beautiful, newly-painted home for the rest of their childhoods. It doesn't get any better than that, really.
We are breaking the work down into phases...the first phase is powerwashing the house. Then priming ,and then the two coats of color. I think we finished the powerwashing phase this evening. The boys have done a lot of the powerwashing. Being guys, they enjoyed blasting the water onto anything that caught their fancy. With a little redirection, they got back on task and did a great job. And I am sure our cat will grow back the hair she lost in that incident that I won't be writing about (just kidding). In another instance, I caught one son blasting the first letter of his name onto our concrete sports court. He said he wasn't going to write his name, but his brother's. That way I would not know who really did it. Yeah, clever...
On to the priming phase!!
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