Painting
Sunday, August 29th, 2010
For the last few weeks I have been spending my spare time painting the Duck Shack. The last paint job, while it looked good going on, was terrible. Put a scraper to the siding and you go two layers deep in paint before you hit solid… wood. Yep, not much effort went into prepping things last time. It’s a shame, because the paint itself has another bunch of years in it. It’s that old, peeling paint that is the problem. Oh well, my scraper is getting a work out…
Painting takes me back to those good old days when I was short on life-experience. But full of optimism I guess. Anyway, I learned to paint a few summers during college working for a painter, John Carlton, in our church. He must have employed every able, available body in our church at some point over the years. I can’t remember how many years, maybe three (summers plus other breaks), I worked for him, but they were good years. The pay was good and as John used to say, “Painting beats working for a living.” Yeah, well, it was work, but it wasn’t bad work. And that work was very much appreciated.
Of course, I didn’t really know good work from bad work back then. It beat cleaning out horse stalls, but probably not mowing a meadow. On the other hand… it was a lifelong skill, turns out.
I guess most of what I know about painting I actually learned from my brother, Hal. At the time, he also worked for John, and had several years of experience when I got started. Every day on my house these days I am reminded of the things Hal drilled into me. How to paint a door, what about louvers, door frames, windows (the biggie), trim or siding first?, what needs to be primed, what needs to be sanded? All these things came from my brother. I always thought I could/would paint better than him, but I never did. And I guess I never will.
Rumor has it Hal has been painting the inside of his house this summer. See what I mean about lifelong skills? And I guess this is the summer of the Capshaw boys (now past middle age — barely 
) painting again. Me, I’m lucky to be working on the outside. Another rumor though is that I get to paint the inside next. Maybe I shouldn’t have told Lori about why I know how to paint so well!
And to close, a pic of lovely Lori from this evening.
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