Applying new paint is now only slightly more fun than scraping old paint. Painting used to be a blast, back when you had paint fumes for entertainment. But in their old age, paint manufacturers have become sticks-in-the-mud (rumor has it, Sherwin Williams never cracks a smile now, and Benjamin Moore has become a stoic philosopher) and now only sell low-fume paints so you can’t get high off your house siding. Without fumes, painting is officially a joyless activity that takes you to some pretty dark places. Yesterday, sun glaring, I was standing on a ladder painting the gables and started thinking about water, which strangely led me to think about water-boarding. I found myself wondering, Why didn’t the CIA just give enemy combatants old farmhouses to scrape and paint?
My general philosophy is to let paint flake off the house naturally before repainting, but my wife says that’s unsightly. Built in 1897, our farmhouse has so many layers of lead paint adhered that I’m pretty sure it’s bulletproof. I’ve yet to see a bullet hole in our house, and I’ve inspected every square-inch of it with a paint scraper. Repainting the house is my goal this summer, which is why I’m completely against my wife setting goals.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve tried diligently to get out of painting, but she just repeats her new slogan whenever I approach and open my mouth.
“I ain’t feeling too…” I’ll start to say, but before I can finish telling her about my feelings, she just says, “There’s no ain’t in paint.” This is only slightly more empathetic than her previous slogan: “You can’t spell paint without pain.”
Of course, I’ve already tried the Tom Sawyer bit. But children these days are more streetwise than Mark Twain’s time. You’d think climbing a twenty-foot ladder with a sharp paint scraper would appeal to adventurous kids, but so far none of the neighborhood children have wanted to paint my house. They just stay inside and play video games. It’s sad really, the work ethic of children these days.
What’s your least favorite farm activity or chore?
Laughing out loud! We were just discussing who was going to power wash and re-stain our log home!
While I did not have to scrape it to start with, I did repaint our entire house from brown with brown trim (exciting I know) to cream with lighter brown trim. By hand because many of the boards were too rough to take a roller and we were too cheap to pay someone. Well, there was one section of house even I was not suicidal enough to attempt with a ladder on the roof. professionals worked on that. I started in October 2017 and said I would be done by Thanksgiving. Just this spring I painted a section of trim I had forgotten about… Here is the bigger question. WHO let us buy wooden houses!
Good news though, painters are allowed the occasional drink on the job. But I would reserve that to first floor painting where no ladders can be harmed.
I would say painting is my least favorite, but I keep doing it. Ill forget how much I hate it and pick up a brush again… Weedeating has got to be my least favorite. There is nothing fun about that.
Good Luck!
I know, I feel want to be done by this summer but I feel like at the rate I’m going that the first section will need repainting by the time I get done with the last section.
Not a big fan of weedeating either, especially putting new string in it. I can never remember how it’s supposed to go in and usually have to do it two or three times to get it to feed right.
I was able to roller about 1/8th of the house I believe, and even then, I was wishing for hardie board siding. Is that a thing? Can that be made affordable?
On some sections of our house, I’m actually taking off the old clapboards, putting in insallation in walls, then putting up osb and then hardie board back. It’s a lot of work, but in some ways I think it’s almost easier than scraping. And hopefully it will hold the paint a lot better and I won’t have to repaint in five years.
Painting is actually one of my favorite things to do here! (If I can do it alone and with loud music next to me that is..) I would have to say that mowing has become my least favorite thing to do on the homestead. Especially with a push mower. 😛
Music is definitely a good idea. I’ve found that listening to podcasts also helps with the tediousness of painting.
Usually, at the beginning of spring, I’m excited to cut grass, but midway through I writing Elon Musk and pleading with him to invent an affordable robotic lawn mower.
Lol, maybe they’ll make a lawn mower that’s like the Rumba. 😂 Then we wouldn’t have to worry about mowing as much! I used to love mowing with the riding lawn mower, but anymore it just takes so long to mow and it gets boring after a while.
Thanks for the comic relief.
The funny title of this post has extra zing for me because it triggers recall of my cheerfully silly ode to lichen:
Lichen looks like flaking paint.
Inorganic? No, it ain’t.
Do not try to watch it grow.
Each micron takes a day or so.
https://mellowcurmudgeon.files.wordpress.com/2018/07/lichen-2_840x536.jpg
I like it. You may be the first person in the history of the world to write an ode about lichen, a very underrated poetic subject if you ask me.
If my interogators forced me to scrape and paint I’d give up the secret rocket formula in no time.
Yeah, me too. If I had to guess, I’d say scraping and painting is more or less the root cause of nuclear proliferation.