amateur hour
work in progress
We're painting our house this summer. It was well overdue for it, with paint peeling and bare wood showing all around. We have to do all four walls so we decided to change the color, since we didn't pick the old color to begin with. Family and friends have expressed some skepticism about our decision to do the work ourselves, and they're entirely right to do so. I don't know the first thing about painting, and I don't think that my internet research made me any more qualified. But finances didn't allow any other choice, and with the bees coming back in May we knew we had to get started (I didn't relish climbing up a ladder set over their hive).
Who knows how long our amateur paint job will last. But even if we have to start touching it up in a couple years I won't mind too much. The whole thing is a wonderful learning experience! As of today we're almost finished with the third side, and I've done a better job scraping and painting on each one. The last wall is going to be a thing of beauty. I'm told that my maternal grandfather painted one wall of his house every summer, which seems like a reasonable rate; if the back of the house, where I started off this year, starts to go bad right away, I'll be happy to do it over next summer and start the incremental cycle myself.
The nice part about doing it ourselves—besides saving several thousand dollars, of course—is that it's a learning process. I like learning, because when I learn I know more things. Skills particularly often seem devalued in our specialized society, which seems like a shame even if you do happen to have the funds to pay people to do everything for you. If I never had the option of taking my car in to get fixed by a mechanic I'd know a lot more about how it worked, and be happier for it. Of course, it's hard to gain those sorts of skills without someone to teach you, and in the case of automotive repairs the consequences of failure are pretty high (remember I don't want to be car-free). Painting, though, is more tolerant of failure, because we can always just do it again.
When we were deciding what we could do about all the peeling paint Leah's dad actually suggested he might pay for professional painters to come and do the work. Among the reasons we decided not to follow up on that idea was that I was afraid that, if I couldn't even paint a house, I wouldn't be able to do anything. That's not entirely fair, I suppose—despite not being brought up handy I have managed to build a chicken coop and change my car battery. But still, the bar moves ever higher and I didn't want to balk at this simple task. It's nearly done now, so I'm full of confidence for the future. What feats of manly vigor will I accomplish next? Patching the rust holes in the bodywork of the car? Replacing the rotted-out window sills and frames on the north side of the house? The possibilities are endless!