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Friday Slide Show: House Surgery
9 February 2024
After the atmospheric river passed through this week (during which we lost power for two hours while cooking brunch and seven hours while cooking dinner on our fortunately gas stove with oil lamps), the painters called to say they would come by to pressure wash the house.
You can't script stuff like this. No one would believe you.
We'd contracted to have the place painted after 17 years late last year. Naturally the guy who painted it last time has retired. And we really liked him. We called him the house doctor. He went over the house more thoroughly than the housing inspector when we bought it and had a solution for every problem he found.
So we had to find a new painter and as luck would have it, a friend was assisting a Venezuelan refugee family and had mentioned the father had gotten a job with a painter. We looked up the firm and it was all five stars with glowing reviews.
As it happened they weren't the first outfit who submitted a bit. But they gave the place a more thorough look and came up with an estimate on the spot that they verified by email a few days later. We had walked around the building with the estimator and had been impressed with his both his observations about what had to be done and how it might be achieved.
So we went with them.
February was as soon as they could get us on the schedule. But no one factored in severe weather.
The day after the place was pressure washed, it rained again.
But it didn't really matter. The next day the prep crew arrived. Prep is the secret to a great paint job that lasts. We've noticed a lot of commercial painters around here who skimp on the prep. It's nasty and hard work. And once you toss some fresh paint over something, who notices?
Not these guys. They sanded the trim back to the bare wood and chiseled the stucco to reveal its cracks and fissures. Doctors? They were surgeons.
We had to take a few photos before the evidence is obscured by the repairs. So after the crew left for the day, we dashed out to the back of the house for a few somewhat abstract impressionist snapshots.
And then it rained.
