The Mission:	Paint the house - yeah three words… but, like an elephant after a dodgy curry, it's one heck of a big job!
The Team:	Mostly Rob with the occasional assistance from friends & a bit of familyJ
The Equipment:	Paint scrapers, a heat gun, sand paper and various sanding implements of destruction - along with a never ending urge to buy more power tools to make it a faster easier job (see cost of the mission at the bottom of the page).
Mission Overview:	"What a great idea - I'll take a few days off work over the slow Christmas period, mixed cleverly with the statutory holidays and have a couple of weeks to prepare and paint the house" Eeesh...

Starting out the back of the house served the dual purpose of eliminating the odds of having to discuss paint schemes and preparation methods with the passers by, along with giving me ONE area of the house that I [hopefully] won't be embarrassed to show off come my Mid-January birthday and the resulting BBQ with friends.

« Day 1 - 23/12/2000
Armed with a Stanley scraper I originally bought to take the lino off the dining room window sills (lino on window sills - crikey, I'll have to deal with that logic in another renovation mission) I set to and attacked the flakey paint - you can see on the Day 1 shot that there are a few patches missing already, as I was soon to learn, scraping crappy paint from wood work is addictive in a strange and frightening way. I had a beer to 2 on the back steps with my sister and her husband and took to the paintwork the night before - they left for Raglan the next day and as you can see by comparing with the Day 2 shot, I got stuck in to the job.

» Day 2 - 24/12/2000
On hindsight, just a scraper didn't cut the mustard, and using the heat gun in one hand and the scraper in the other worked much better - although it ruined my arms for days to come - fortunately, Christmas was just around the corner and I allowed myself a few days off… with a couple of hours spent here and there taking out the frustrations that accompany the gathering of relatives in our family.

« Day 3 - 01/01/2001
A pox on scrapers and heat guns, with temperatures reaching 25-27 degrees (yeah - I've been in worse too, but it's a humid heat) I was not prepared to attack the rest of the house with a damn scraper - thus off to Placemakers to get me a belt sander. I did chat to the Mitre 10 guys up the road the day before and they thought an orbital sander (like the one I already have) would do the trick - the lads at Placemakers (not Albany - after giving them 15 minutes to approach me to sell something I figured their fishing story must've been far more important than their commission on the sale.) anyway, the lads at Placemakers agreed with the guys at Mitre 10 and suggested another couple of orbital sanders to replace my one once I'd burnt it out after 2 days use. The amount of amusement they got from hearing the Mitre 10 theory on the suitability of an orbital sander designed to deal with interior decorating to prepare some 600 square meters of weatherboards was so great that they were in a good enough mood to give me a hefty discount on a good quality Makita Belt Sander.
My advice to those of you contemplating renovations - get more than one opinion on both the methodology and the tools used before getting too far into the job.
Getting back to the painting mission, the belt sander ROCKS! using a 40 grit belt we were able to chew through a sh!tload of preparation work, and - since I was "Mr Sober Driver" for New Years eve and Dennis' girlfriend Helen is immune to hangovers, Helen scraped the bits where the belt sander couldn't reach while I sanded over the other side next to the spare room. A full days work saw a huge amount done which you can see in the shot from the start of Day 4...

» Day 4 - 02/01/2001
Like the Cricket, rain stopped play a whole heap today… so much so that I spent much of the morning inside writing up these notes while Helen read a book (for which I was thankful as I was still feeling guilty about letting her work so hard on the scraping yesterday). Anyway, the belt sander did the trick and all the weatherboards were completed by the end of the day - just some fiddly scraping to do now - including the doors and sills. [sigh]

« Day 5 - 03/01/2001
Well, I looked at the doors and sills, half-heartedly scraped at the spare room window sill and decided it'd be more fun to strap myself to the belt sander and attack the north wall of the laundry which is mainly weatherboard. I got most of it done before Dad dropped by to check out the phantom pipes sticking through the side of the house and then Hamish dropped by for a beer before he heads out to the West Island for another years work in Melborne - but look at that blue sky - can you blame me for quitting early?

» Day 6 - 05/01/2001
Took yesterday off as I had to do a trial run for the 6.4 odd Km swim from Rangi to Takapuna. Got a particularly nice wetsuit rash under my arms but I can do the distance - the only factor now is getting the tides and conditions right before Dean heads to Ireland.. not looking too hopeful.
Anyway, it was the day of the fiddly bits - painting-wise that is… I spent from 0900 until 18:30 apart from a 30min lunch break which I used to go grab the saw horses from Dads place and a couple of bit of scaffold planking. Not much to show for the full days effort, but at least I'm ready to start painting one section of the wall now J.