Painting the Porch

This early morning spell is a prelude to more painting. Time and season have overtaken us and a big job we were hoping would not be necessary--painting all the gingerbread on our front porch--announced itself ready to be done. Oh, it had been maybe five years since we'd touched the paint and it was beginning to peel and chip. But somehow when you're showing a house in the dead and drear of winter, chipped paint doesn't seem to matter all that much. Now, though, the days are brighter and longer, the birds are chirping, perennials are breaking ground, and the dowdiness of our painted lady couldn't be overlooked. And since we're trying to move this home improvement project along, and since Steve is occupied on the inside, the work fell to me, the non-painter.

Don't get me wrong. I'm overjoyed to be contributing to the sweat equity, and the look of the newly colorful pieces of wood is delightful. But the work requires me to assume positions I didn't know I could, using balancing and stooping muscles I forgot I had. I'm sore today. But the show must go on.

Essentially, this Gets broken down to this And I do this Note the gloves on the hands and the paint on the feet. The gloves were an idea I got after my first few hours, when my hands and fingers took on the look of an artist's palette. My feet got a few more spots on them and my knees didn't completely escape attention, either. But the job is moving along and I'm proud of it.

You see I'm sitting on a bucket. It's obvious that kneeling before the long slats would be the most efficient position to be in, but my knees object to that pressure. And the slats are so long that I can't paint an entire one from just one position. So I spent much of yesterday getting up and moving from one bucket to another, constantly re-positioning the pieces of wood, stepping between and over them, using balancing and knee-lift skills this out-size corpus of mine doesn't really like, never did.

The sacrifices we make for a few thousand bucks! But the work is moving fast and soon enough it will be done, never to be repeated, at least not by Ralph or Steve. And the porch will once again be gorgeous.