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porch & exterior, part 5:
prepping for paint
it's like rinsing the dishes before you put them in
the dishwasher
As part of our house
refinance, we were able to set aside extra money to have the house
painted, something we'd wanted to get done from the day we moved in. It
was such a big deal, as a matter of fact, that the day after the finance
company cut our checks, we wrote a preliminary payment to the painting
contractor we'd selected.
They had several other
jobs to finish before they could get to ours, and by then, it would be too
late in the season to paint (too wet), but part of the contractor's bid
included a winterizing package if they weren't able to paint until spring.
Which played a large part in our choice; I can't tell you the number of
nights I've lain awake in the winters, obsessing over how much water we
were getting and whether this would be the year that all the bare places
on the house, the places where the paint had long since flaked off and the
original wood siding was exposed to the elements would start showing signs
of moisture damage or rot. So the peace of mind of having all of the holes
caulked and the bare wood primed before the long rains of winter set in
was, frankly, worth a whole lot more than what we paid.
While we waited for our
turn on the contractor's list, we had to have the back porch fixed (so
they could prime the new skirting as part of the winterizing). And once
the winterizing was done, all we could was sit back and wait for the rains
to die down long enough for us to get out and do the miscellaneous
exterior repairs that had to be complete before the painters could come in
the spring.
Oregon had a record amount
of rainfall this winter, which is saying something considering the amount
of water this place gets in the winter. For two kids from the mountain
desert, it's a veritable deluge every year, but this year -- the year that
we were waiting on the rains to subside in order for our house project to
commence -- was of course the year the deluge turned positively biblical.
So everyone who was grumbling about all the rain this year? Mea culpa,
people.
It's funny the amount of
work you have to do to a house to prepare it to prepare it for painting.
Before the sanding and scraping and all of that, we had to take care of
our part, which included fixing five broken windows, taking down all of
the screens, removing the back porch stairs (to be rebuilt later),
building a fascia piece for the front porch to trim off the lattice,
having the gutters reattached, having two of the downspouts relocated,
having the leaded glass upper in the picture window repointed and releaded,
taking down the crappy plastic security light in the back, and removing
the crappy metal screen door on the back porch.
Most of that we could do
ourselves -- actually, probably all of it -- but we hired a gutter guy to
take care of those, and a stained glass guy to take care of that, and a
regular glass guy to take care of those. (These are all "before"
pictures...you'll see the "after" pics in the next stage, with the painted
house.)
The funny thing about all
of that stuff like the gutters and the cracked windows are the kind of
thing you get used to when you've got much larger projects and more
pressing repairs. One thing you quickly learn when you buy a fixer-upper
is not to focus on more than a few problems at a time, simply because
there's so much to be done and it'd be easy to get overwhelmed if you
didn't. You know you'll get to them all sooner or later, so you learn to
ignore the pea-sized hole in your bedroom window and the ominous groaning
sound the gutters make during a heavy rain.
But here's the thing: once
those things are all fixed? It's nearly as good as having the house
painted. Sure, they're details that maybe no one else would notice, but
because you've had to make a habit of studiously ignoring them for so
long, having them put back in order is as big a change for you as the
change in your house's colors is for your neighbors.
Slowly but surely, we're
putting the old girl back the way she was once: the cherished home of a
loving family. |
