What have I been doing this summer?

I have no idea.

I mean, I know where I am and what projects I’ve undertaken. But many of these projects are unfamiliar territory, and thus foster a whole gamut of misadventures.

This season’s example: Painting the garage. How hard could it be? Those of you who, like me, had never before painted a garage are shrugging your shoulders, agreeing that garages are square and putting paint on them is not complicated. Those of you with experience in painting garages aren’t calling me to offer their assistance…

I thought it couldn’t be that difficult. Wash the walls, lay down some drop cloths, slap some paint on. But a garage built into a hill, a sagging roof that the contractor assured me was structurally sound, and random nails sticking out of a few rotten boards is less than ideal, I think.

I naively embarked on this DIY adventure in July 2022 after a May hail storm won me a new roof and gutters. The contractor’s insistence that I choose a color for the shingles and gutters – asphalt shingles actually come in more colors than black; who knew? – and my fledgling desire to update my home’s exterior color when I bought the house a year ago, combined with an estimate of $10k to have a professional paint my house, drove me into the local paint supply shop (God bless you for your expertise, Glen) and the world of latex semi-lustre exterior paints. I thought choosing a color would be the hardest part.

Anticipating the roof and shingle installation pending completion in September, and looking to take advantage of not needing to mask off shingles and gutters that were going to the dumpster anyway, I spent every single one of my summer Thursdays off cleaning, sanding, priming, and taping.

And then Jack Frost showed up, and froze my paint party in September. So for the past 10 months my house was blue, but my garage was an unfortunate, undecided shade of almond on white. One of my most anticipated summer to-do list items was to complete this never-ending painting task, fraught with mistakes (ask me about the paint puddle on the deck sometime. Or the ½ gallon on the east lawn. Or the window pane that got to be blue for a while.).

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Fast forward to July 2023. I’ve finally got the downtime to spill paint again, so I tackle the first item on my winter spreadsheet itemized task list: Scrape north face of garage. No big deal. Just a 20×50 foot wall of peeling paint, rotting boards, and uneven ground just below a power line. I figured it would take me 3 hours, tops.

FOUR DAYS LATER, I’m still scraping paint. But I’ve mastered the non-OSHA compliant setup of a ladder straddling a stump, with a landscaping brick under one leg to make the ground level, Jessica standing with one foot on a rung and plastering her other foot against the wall in order to reach the eave overhead. 7mph breezes are very gentle, except when you’re trying to wrangle masking plastic and a roll of tape from atop a ladder. I’ve had a lot of arguments with the wind – and I’ve lost every one of them.

As with any project I’ve ever tackled, the deeper I go, the more work is found. Today I’ve decided to take the trim board dangling from the northwest eave and line it up with its neighbors. I went to the hardware store to fetch a mending brace (I looked for a bar with holes in it, and ACE labeled the bar thus) and positioned the ladder below the offending dangler. I ascended the ladder, armed with a drill, screws, the mending brace, and blithe but ill-founded confidence. The eave was 2″ closer to the wall than the combined length of the drill and screw, so I was forced to remove my fingers from the grip of the drill, using my thumb on the trigger instead. This, combined with a 120⁰ torso twist from my precarious ladder perch and my lack of necessary hands (I needed at least three) led to a predictable fumbling of five screws in rapid succession to the grass below, each accompanied by a dagnabit. I was able to locate four of them (repeatedly, crawling up and down the ladder thrice), and finally the four screws were seated in the brace, the trim board oriented somewhat in the intended plane.

On day six, I finally sprayed the garage the same blue hue as the house! But it took two more weeks and 12 more hours of touch-ups to declare the project complete.

Now, I smile whenever I pull up my driveway. And I beg my visitors not to look too closely at the corners.

All this to say: Support your local craftsmen. Pay the painters! Their fees are most certainly lower than the blood, sweat, tears, and dignity you will pour into this project.