When we got the garage built, El Dorado County wouldn't sign off on the building permit until it was painted. We apparently had six months to finish it in. Of course, procrastinators that we are, instead of getting to it straight away, we opted to wait until it got really hot in June, July and August. At which point, it was too hot to paint, so we had to put it off.
September came and we couldn't put it off any longer. We spent the entire weekend of the 8th/9th slaves to the paint brush. Because of the tendency of the rain to fall off the roof, bounce down onto the ground and for the red dirt to then bounce back up against the sides of the garage, we decided to stain it red dirt coloured. This worked brilliantly and you'll never notice the red dirt again (until a few years time when it needs a new coat).
I worked on the trim, and sometimes was allowed to operate the sprayer (we started by using the sprayer to apply the stain), while Patrick worked frantically behind me, spreading it all out evenly with the paint brush. We did pretty well, except for the two end gables that were too high for me to reach, so Patrick had to do them.
Of course, standing on a wobbly ladder on wobbly legs wasn't the best idea, so Patrick had to stop sooner than he wanted to. So instead, he opted to take Tuesday off in order to finish off the painting in time for Wednesday's inspection.
Tuesday dawned with a friend phoning us at 7am to turn the TV on. We sat rigid in front of it for hours and hours, until eventually having to get up and attend to our respective work. I'm glad I was supposed to be doing normal work, because painting tends to make me introspective and Patrick says I shouldn't be left alone to think about things in my head. He's right.
The only good thing about Tuesday was, at the time, you couldn't quite comprehend what had happened and the enormity of it. That part didn't sink in for several days. If then. There's really nothing I can say about it though, to make it any different or any better.
View from the house, looking up the hill.
