06/02/2002 - 27/04/2002 - Painting Mission #3 - The Front Elevation
Well - it's been a long time in the pipeline, but finally 3 sides of the house are complete (well if we ignore those fiddly windows - which I promise to do as weekend projects should there be some fine weekends this winter). It all started waaay back in February over Waitangi Weekend when I once again hired the marvellous Metabo Paint Stripper for 4 days during which I attacked the Onewa Road elevation of the house.
After a bit of a false start as Hirepool forgot to get the unit in from their New Lynn branch (which is apparently the only place with the tool) despite me booking it a few weeks in advance <cue references to type-a personalities> but we got it sorted by lunchtime so only lost half a day.

« 21/04/2003 - In the sizable break between Waitangi weekend and Easter, the fiddly bits in the corners and on the undersides of the weatherboards were progressively all heat gunned and scraped away. It's particularly disheartening work as you can spend 4 hours on the house and you see piss all chance at the end of it.
Anyway - Easter and ANZAC were particularly well organised this year so, for the 'price' of 3 days of annual leave, I got a 10 day stretch to work on the house (after returning from my best mate Deans wedding of course).
So, the day after I got back, I was up and down the ladder getting stuck in with the belt sander touching up all the whoopsies where the paint stripper got a bit excitable and gouged the weatherboards a tad. Then it was out with the water blaster to wash up, all ready for the next day of painting...Finally!

» 22/04/2003-23/04/2003 - The priming was kinda slow work but extremely satisfying nonetheless to see some colour going onto the house (even if it was just a white undercoat). Had to pickup another pail of undercoat before I could start this section and was lucky enough to get some in to the local paint shop which arrived on courier an hour before everything shut for ANZAC day <phew!>

« 24/04/2003-25/04/2003 - Dammit if I didn't have to go back to the paint store and get another pail of the high gloss, deep base 'Cold Steel' - found out that this is the most expensive formulation of that paint, lucky it looks so damn good eh?
Got back from the paint store at just after 10:00 to find Mum & Dad all rearing to put some colour on the place (it's been too cold to paint and the dew hasn't burnt off until around 10ish anyways). It turns out that in their excitement Dad had poured a tray of the 'Sardinia' which is the lighter blue I've been using for the window frames and before you know it, it was up on the weatherboards… Slightly strange to have a light blue patch for the 4 hours it takes to dry between coats, but we managed to paint the first coat in just over 3 hours so I touched up the light blue patch after they'd taken off and managed to get some of the second coat on before it got too cold to paint that evening.
The next day, being a Sunday (thus the olds making themselves unavailable) saw a solo effort from me to finish everything off - fortunately I got the last of the paint on a couple of hours before the weather closed in, but I must 'fess up to going and standing in the rain to inspect the paint finish and make sure it wasn't getting all screwed up (though, what I'd have done if it was I still don't know).

But there you go - look at those pics - just need to finish off the 3 windows and the front door, and wack some nice big brass numbers on the side of the house and we're done on 3 sides. Now to switch the focus to the interior renovations for the winter. .. Stay tuned!