Of course the operation really began back in August when I shifted the woodpiles, trellises and shrubs away from the house. Then I borrowed neighbor Max's long fiberglass ladder and bought a pressure washer. Pressure washing the cedar siding removed a lot of the loose stain (last painted in 1985!) and general crud. In some cases, especially around the octagon window, the high pressure spray (1800 psi) removed all or almost all the color. There were a few places I had to scrub some particularly resistant mold or algae with a brush and I used "30-Second" cleaner in a few spots that were especially bad. The time we were away in Slovenia, Italy and Austria provided the opportunity for the wet siding to dry, so when we returned, the house was ready for the first coat.
Or so we thought. In retrospect, neither C.J. nor I had a clue as to how long it would take to re-stain the house once the prep work had been completed. I was thinking that it would take just a few days when in reality it took us close to six weeks! On September 9th I went to Sears and bought 8 gallons of paint. I wonder if, at the time, I thought that would be enough for the whole house. ( I was using Olympic opaque deck, siding, and fence stain in Heritage Gray and Sears had it on sale. Later in the process I made several trips to Lowes buying four 5-gallon buckets of the same stain. We ended up with about three gallons left over.) On the same day I covered about a third of the north side of the house.
One of the reasons for the extended time was that I decided we needed to brush and roll on the first coat so we were sure that we got full coverage. Part of that choice was that I had had no experience at all with an airless sprayer and I was going to have to borrow one from Bruno or Max anyway.
Thank goodness C.J. was willing to work with me as we painted; it would have gone a lot slower without her . C.J. didn't like to work on the high ladder but she did the seams between the boards as high as she could reach and then used the Cosco 5-in-one ladder with scaffolding boards to work higher. I used a nine-inch roller for the north side of the house and that worked reasonably well. Then C.J. took over the roller to do the lower part of the wall and I used a 2.5 inch roller for the the rest of the wall and the eaves. The eaves were difficult because the roofer had used nails that extended through the sheathing and had to be painted around (and, of course, I was working over my head which is always tiring). We did the east side of the house next. At this point I began using a stiff brush to remove the dried paint flakes and other grit. This increased the time required and the effort as well so the application process slowed down considerably. The east side took a long time, too, because we had the bottom side of the balcony to do as well as all the balcony railings. But at least there was not so much high-ladder work since we could work from the deck and the balcony.
The south side was next and then the more complicated front of the house with its porch and many windows. September 28 marked the completion of the first coat and we began the second coat on the 30th after borrowing Max's sprayer. Coverage went much faster now whether it was the effect of the sprayer or just that a second coat was easier. It probably wasn't the sprayer because spraying required back brushing, which was almost as time consuming as rolling. Now the weather began to interfere with the painting - it rained on Oct. 2, 3, 4 with showers on the 5th. It wasn't until the 7th that we really got back to painting, interrupted by a couple of days of substituting at St. George. But by the 12th we had finished all the spraying and by the 14th had done the trim and on the 15th I took down the window masking and the porch roof tarp. Finished!
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