Trick or Treat (Day 370)

Its Saturday, Halloween, and I'm hoping for treats not tricks. It rained buckets in Seattle yesterday, but not a drop fell on us in Port Townsend so I made some real progress in terms of painting the exterior of the hose. As you'll recall, all the shingles are up on the back of the house and now we need to get paint on them (upper level) and Hardiboard (lower level).

I fired up the "Ken Olsen Spray Tech 2120" rig, its a real monster. Feeds from a 5 gal bucket through a 50 ft hose. After reading the manual, I went to PT and got a replacement spray tip and a swivel extension, which saved my bacon. The extension is 3 ft long and allows you to spray a vertical pattern 10 ft high, so I didn't need to operate off a ladder on top of the scaffolding. I actually felt safe for a change. Anyway, after getting the rig set up and loaded with paint, I sprayed the entire north-facing section of the house (a triangle, 48 ft long and 12 ft high) in about 10 minutes! Then I back rolled it all (forces the paint into the shingles) with a 9" roller. I used a 6" foam roller to squeeze paint into the porous ends of the shingles so they'd be painted too. After about an hour, I reshot all the shingles with a light coat and back rolled it all a second time. Start to finish was about 4 hours, including a hour to clean up the sprayer. We're using oil-based stain (Cabots), so clean up is more complicated than latex.

Today, Darrell Olson (not a relative of Kens, but should be) is coming over so we can move all the scaffolding around to the back side of the house. Then I'll spray those shingles, break down the scaffolding, and start spraying the Hardiboard from ground level on Sunday. The weather forecast is for mild temps (50s) and decreasing rain through Wednesday, which is our current deadline for completing the exterior. Its looking like we'll be in for a treat ($1000 refund), not a trick (fines) from the Architectural Committee.

Nancy and I are starting our new careers as amateur landscape gardeners. A local nursery (Secret Gardens) is having their end of season sale through today, so yesterday we went down and picked out 7 trees and a dozen scrubs in exchange for a M-note. At 35% off, it'll save us some bucks, but plants are expensive if you want a yard that doesn't look Lilliputian. The idea is to get the bigger plants in the ground now so their roots will get established over the winter, then add foliage in the spring. The trees include a giant redwood, birch, 2 western red cedars, a colorful maple, and 2 flowering dogwoods. Now the trick will be to keep the deer from eating all the new growth in the spring. I'm thinking paint ball gun so we can scare and mark the vandals in one pull of the trigger.