A Weekend of Painting

It was a long weekend here in Saskatchewan (and most of Canada) this past weekend and I spent most of it painting… Unfortunately it’s not the sort of painting I usually post about on this blog.  No, dear friends, I was house painting.

I may have mentioned we've been renovating... We has talked to a couple of younger fellows about a year about about taking on the project and they were not only willing to do it, they seemed rather keen to take on this sort of project – which is in sharp contrast to the attitude of most builders in this town who would all tell us to tear down our house and build a new one… They originally said they would like to start as early as they could. May, perhaps April if the snow was gone…

Well, things got held up… and they didn’t end up STARTING until the end of July – when they’d originally told us they’d be DONE! (which would have given me most of August to do the few things I was going to do on my own – painting, flooring, some finish work…). When they started in July they told us they’d be done and gone in 6 weeks. It’s now mid October and there’s still a LOT of work to be done – and this is causing me some anxiety as they still need to finish getting the exterior insulation up, roofing, and stucco done and winter is fast approaching – it is dropping well below 0°C at night which is going to make stuccoing a bit of a challenge!

Anyway, here’s some pics of what’s been going on…

(Remember: click on the pictures for a bigger version):

This is what our house looked like at the end of July.

Three pics of the upstairs all cleared out ready to go – keep an eye on that stairwell and the low ceiling and chimney beside it (that any adult would have to duck and walk hunched over past to get into our room upstairs).

Here’s what the house is currently looking like from the outside.

Essentially we needed a new roof and some insulation. The existing walls are brick with wood-chips inbetween – completely inadequate for a region that gets to -40°C (and below!) in winter. While we were at it we figured it might be nice to build a dormer upstairs and replace all the ancient windows that had long since been painted shut.

It turned out easier to just tear the whole roof off than cut holes for some dormers and so we’ve essentially gotten a whole second story where there was previously just a half-story-loft-like room…

So this weekend we packed the kids off to their grandparents and Amanda and I have been painting the walls upstairs all day for the last few days….

That’s me way up there perched precariously over the stairwell cutting the white for the ceiling. This is one of those time where being an artist has really come to bite me in the ass. Amanda reasoned that because I have such a steady hand and keen eye that I should do all of the cutting. I tried to point out that I don’t often paint or draw pictures while perched on a rickety ladder and have to reach so far with my brushes and pens… This was even less fun the next day when I had to paint a straight line around those fiddley bits between the wall and ceiling…

Amanda rolling the ceiling.

By Sunday we were on to the walls.

Amanda rolling the first coat of purple.

First coat on the walls done.

Me again, cutting the second coat of purple on the walls.

Sunday night, starting the red in the bathroom.

By Monday we were just finishing  up the red in the bathroom and dark purple in the little alcove-like-area in the front dormer…

We'll need to do a  third coat on the bathroom yet and then I get to put down some tile in there (fun times...). We also have some work to do on that unfinished wall, which, believe it or not, is going to be a climbing wall?! but things are getting there...