Up To No Good

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. Manlet and his family are coming from out of town today. Daughterlet and friend will be out tomorrow, as will more friends and family. We have been painting the exterior of our house since July. It’s big, and we are painting entirely by brush. But I am most definitely tired of the job.

We have been battling cool/cold weather and rain for the last month. It needs to be 50° out to paint; better yet 60°. It also has to be dry. We’ve had close to four inches of rain since Saturday. Gully washer torrents have been pour down from the heavens at regular intervals.

“Can I paint?” says the Hubster Saturday after lunch.  His tenacity in completing his task is admirable.

I grab my phone. It’s now 52° at one o’clock in the afternoon. Looking outside I see that there is a typical ‘Seattle-ish ‘drizzle’ at the moment, but the last bit of painting to be done is on both sides of our attached garage, including the area leading to the front door. I want this area in particular to look nice.

“Sure, Sweetie,” I respond. “You should be able to paint the under eaves and around the bay window. The overhang should have kept those dry.”

A couple of hours pass and I’m heading out the front door to run errands. Steve is on a ladder cleaning cobwebs and spider nests from the eaves near the door. I ask him to please pull the nails that I had up for my hanging baskets as I don’t want them to be painted. I may not even put my baskets up in that same place next year. I do change things up a lot. Like every five or ten years. Hard concept for an Aspie.

“Okay, (mumble mumble mumble),” comes from Hubby. I decide not to have him repeat himself as it can cause him anxiety and push him into frantic activity if he becomes annoyed that I asked when he was busy thinking about his task. When will I learn?

At 5:30 p.m. I come rolling down our long driveway. It is pitch black out. Since we’ve been working on the painting, the front-of-the-house light fixtures have been off the house. I see a slight glow from the far side of the porch. It’s a small camping lantern. As my headlights swing over the front door area, I see Steve jumping as high as he can to stab his paintbrush up into the highest corner under the eaves next to the door.

I slam on my brakes and jump out of the car. “STEVE! What are you doing?” My wipers are going a hundred miles an hour because of the current deluge of rain. I’m not sure if I could trust my eyes.

The Hubster jumps and slaps his brush a couple more times, then turns and runs into the garage. I follow him, asking why he is jumping up to paint instead of using a ladder. He keeps his back to me and ignores me. I go back to my car, which is still running with the headlights lighting up the front walkway. That’s when I notice the whole side of the garage glistening.

I walk over and see that none of the eaves were painted. Only the siding, which had been soaking wet with rain when I left. I couldn’t believe it! I parked my car and called Kidlet to come help carry things in. By now I am very, very wet. And angry.

When Steve finally came in he told me that he wants to paint his way. He has no clue how be a painter. I’ve had him watch DIY online vids but he refuses to follow the suggestions and procedures. He doesn’t want to be told what to do, says he. Needless to say, I was not a happy camper that night.

Sunday morning I head out the door with the dogs. One of them brushed up against the newly painted siding and was instantly covered in paint. It had been sixteen hours or more since Steve painted there. I looked closer. There were hundreds of long, wet drips and dozens of areas with wet sagging paint. Yes, I admit it. I screamed.

Steve insisted that the siding really wasn’t ‘too’ wet for paint because there were no puddles ‘standing on it’, and that he didn’t paint the eaves because he wanted to make the house ‘look nice’ for Thanksgiving by having the siding paint on.

He then spent about two hours trying to ‘paint out’ or blot off all of the mess. I have to admit it doesn’t look too bad right now. A second coat of paint, done in dry weather. will probably even things out. Yesterday he did paint under the eaves. But he also painted the window trim the wrong color. *Sigh.*

Does anyone know a good, cheap painter?