Yes, yes, yes!

 

Do you know what this is? This is not just any ol' pile of junk, my friends. This. This pile of junk belongs to a house painter! Yes, indeedy! The Bangor Foursquare is finally, finally, FINALLY going to get a well-deserved facelift! We have hired Graduate Painting LLC to pretty-up this crack-house-looking old place. Woot and double woot!

If you recall, Tim and I seriously misjudged the scope and amount of work scraping and repainting the Bangor Foursquare would be. After about four months of work in every spare minute we had, all we were able to finish was the porch. Granted, the most detailed work was there but, still, we had absolutely no idea how big this job was going to be (or how suck-tastic it would be). See below our work:

So, we are beyond delighted that the Graduate Painting will be here in the next couple weeks to scrape this bad boy and get her looking a little less embarrassing. Therefore, behold the "before" photos and strap in, folks! I am just way too excited!

Back in the Painting Saddle

When we last joined you in fall 2013, we had just finished up scraping and painting the porch of the Bangor Foursquare. Needless to say, it was a LOT more work that we had originally anticipated. The winter months were therefore a bit of a nice respite from this back-breaking, callous-causing, seemingly endless work. However, spring is now upon us here in Maine - finally! - and it is about time to resume the scrapity-scrape-scrape.

If you recall, when working on the porch last fall we ran across this one rotten spindle hiding under all of the paint. Surprisingly, this was the only rotten piece of anything we found in our labors thus far:

I went to my favorite mill working shop, Owen Gray and Son in Brewer, and got a replacement made for the bargain price of $10. We'll be putting that up this weekend I hope and painting it.

We also need to think about the porch stairs before we are officially done with the porch. As porch stairs are wont to do, the paint has been worn off a few of them by shoveling and salt. I don't know if we're just relegated to having to paint them every single year (sigh) or if there is some creative way of dealing with it. We're certainly open to suggestions.

So, now, we begin to turn our attention to a new part of the house. Our original plan was to tackle this side of the house, which faces the other street (we're on a corner):

However, what you can't see from this photo is that this side of the house sits on a slope. We're just not brave enough to deal with ladders or scaffolding here. We're hoping we can finagle a lift or something for a week maybe later this year so we can just pound it out and avoid major bodily harm.

The plan, then, is to tackle the side of the house that faces away from all streets, which probably is a bit anti-climactic but more practical. There are some pretty details on that side of the house, though, which might make it a little more interesting. Here is a picture from last fall when Tim attempted to use some ridiculous tool that we bought from Home Depot, but which failed miserably.

Anyway, we're hoping to get started soon. We'll update, of course. Until then, we'll be resting up our hands, our backs, and our patience.

The Great Esc(r)ape: DONE!

Okay, okay...it's not actually done-done. But it's one eighth done and, hey, that's better than one sixteenth done or one thirty-second done, right? Indeed, yes.

So, here it is - the completed porch:

We've been close to done for a while now but it's this and then that delaying things. Anyway, there it is.

The plan is to enjoy weekends from this point on until about April when it warms up a bit and then we'll attempt the second floor of the front, and then one side at a time. We feel good about it. Yay, us!

Today's Lessons Learned

I don't have any photos today. I worked for seven hours today and feel I have little to show for it. What I did do looks exactly like past photos so you can look at those and imagine I did the same thing again today. This project is definitely hitting the tedium point right about now. However, I did finish scraping the lattice (ugh, finally). Taken together, I learned these lessons today:

1) The four-way stop on the corner by our house seems to be only a suggestion to most drivers.
2) Pandora plays the same damn commercial over and over again so you feel required to buy a subscription only if to maintain your sanity.
3) Painting lattice is only a little less loathsome than scraping it.
4) I'm tired.

That's all I got.

The Great Esc(r)ape: "It's comin' along!"

"It's comin' along!" These are the words guiding today's post as we've heard them at least a hundred times this weekend as we continued to scrape and paint. There's not much to say, really, same-old, same-old (i.e., scrape, paint, repeat). So, we'll just nix the yakkity-yak and show you the goods:

As Tim says, "It's gettin' there."

Knock, knock...

Our 8-year-old is a big fan of knock-knock jokes. So, in Ohara's honor, I present this to you:

Knock, knock.

Who's there?

Lattice.

Lattice who?

Lattice please be done scraping now.

Ugh.

We are nearing the final stretch of scraping on the front porch, now moving to the outside. One piece to be tackled - and perhaps the most formidable - is the lattice, as you see below.

I was able to get a lot of the fronts of the lattice strips and even the tops but getting behind, as you can see, is not quite as easy. 

Taking this break to whine, perhaps it's worthwhile to mention at this time the various scraping accoutrements that have come to our aid in this pain-staking process. 

As pictured above, you can see the very helpful gloves (those heat guns are hot!), a couple of the scrapers that came along with the Speed Heater, and various and sundry other scrapers and implements that have come in handy along the way. Nevertheless, none of these are quite right to get those lattice strips that rest behind the front ones. Grr.

We are making painting progress, however. Tim has begun scraping and painting under the eaves and it's really looking nice. One piece we have left, though, is the wood surround by the front door. I was hoping we would be able to strip it completely so it went along with the front door (open slightly ajar in photo) but it's not looking promising. We'll probably end up painting it but deciding on the pattern feels daunting. We'll also have to figure out what to do with the screen door. Tim and I put that in a few years ago when the house was white. Now that it will be not so much white, it's going to be a bit of an eyesore. Decisions, decisions...

Painting Progress!

Well, here you go: one whole piece of the house with painting complete! Of course, this is barely 1/16th of the house actually completed but I am quite pleased with the results. You can see our three-color paint scheme here. We're contemplating adding a stripe of green to the molding around the window, however, to add some contrast - not quite sure yet.

Taking tomorrow off to continue scraping - hoping to have all of the railings and columns done tomorrow and keep working on the lattice area outside. Then, paint, paint, paint! Yippee!