(Thursday Afternoon - Deck Partially Painted)

Today’s blog is dedicated to all the cottagers who are in the midst of a “renovation or “cottage project.”

Our “little project” started a month ago with my husband staining part of the deck. As you can see from the picture (our cabin on Horne Lake), we have a fairly small outdoor area, approximately 450 square feet, but the lattice, which wraps around 3/4 of the cabin, goes on for miles.

With part of the deck stained, and friends arriving in two days for the long weekend, I decided to get busy and finish the job. Well one thing lead to another and now in addition to staining the deck, I’ve decided the lattice needs to be beautified too. What started off as a three hour project has mushroom into a three day project.

I have never actually stained lattice before and at about 2 p.m. on Wednesday, I realized I’d made a big mistake. ‘Oh my God,’ I thought to myself, ‘I am never going to finish this before the weekend.’

Maryann, our quiet but very cheerful nanny, cautioned me, “Once you start, you have to finish,” she said in the same voice she uses on our children. The two of us slugged away all afternoon barely making a dent on the deck.

By day’s end, we had mercifully ran out of stain. Standing back and surveying the damage, I knew I’d sunk us. The lattice trim went on forever, sucking up paint like water in the hot desert. The trim around the glass was slow, time consuming work. With only 48 hours to go before the weekend, I picked up my cell phone and dialed for help.

My older sister, Natalie, is a pretty good sport. She has come to my rescue on numerous occasions. After several urgent messages, I finally tracked her down. She admitted to getting my call but was pretending to be out of town. After some coaxing, she agreed to pitch in.

At 2 p.m. yesterday afternoon, she arrived with my birthday present, a Wagner Power Painter Lock and Go -model 242. Hugging her I declare, “This is the best birthday present you’ve ever given me!” It takes about 10 minutes to hook up the sprayer, and despite the wind, we manage to get most of the stain onto the lattice. What would have normally taken all afternoon to paint, only takes about 20 minutes of spraying. The Power Painter is a define must have for anybody with a lot of painting to do. It costs about $100 and can be found at Canadian Tire.

Thanks for a great present, Nat.

Cheers,

Julie

This entry was posted on Friday, August 3rd, 2007 at 8:32 pm and is filed under Fix It. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.