A Toolbelt Kind of Day

The day started early (for me on a Saturday) with some roofing at church. I was one of the few with an actual toolbelt on, but I believe in dressing the part. Plus it is very handy.

We got the roof done in fairly short order. Quite a different experience than doing the shop roof with Troy. At the height of activity today, we had 3 coil guns going and almost a dozen people working like busy bees. It's always fun working with people you kind of know but don't talk to much. And then when we were done we were served awesome tacos for lunch. How great is that!

Then when I got home, I figured I'd work on the paint/scraping. You know, I had the toolbelt out anyway... Plus I was home just in time for the area to be in the shade.

Troy had moved the ladder for me so I was able to scrape more of the peak. We have to reposition it one more time (over the power line) so I can reach the lower far right corner.

Meanwhile, I managed to lower and move the ladder myself so I could reach the window trim. I know you're supposed to work top down, but I can't always follow the rules.

I got the trim scraped and you can see that there is not much paint left. The wood looks pretty good in most places. There were two joints where the old caulk just pealed away and I thought Troy would want to caulk the joints in the long horizontal piece on the top. (As I've said before, where caulk is concerned Troy pretty much thinks more is more.)

Then I decided I couldn't wait for Troy all the time and would have to try it out myself. Where better to practise my caulking skills than on a window 20 feet in the air. Who's going to see that? (Not to mention the caulk on the horizontal piece is only visible by the wasps in their nest and I don't really care what they think. With any luck and a little work, they'll be dead soon anyway.)

So I go inside and find the caulking gun and some indoor/outdoor silicone door and window caulk. Sounds good right? I am working on a window. I am outside. It doesn't say "paintable" but it's all I see. And the window's 20 feet up, right? So I use it anyway. ("Get 'er done" is apparently my motto for the day.)

The good news is that it will keep the water out. The bad news is that I've confirmed it is not "paintable." And I only saw the clear silicone. If I had only kept looking and found the white this wouldn't have been so bad. But we will press on and see just how bad it looks (from 20' below) after I do the first coat of primer. I didn't get to that today because I wasn't sure how long I had to wait for the caulk to dry.

We're not expecting rain til Tuesday, but with Insul-a-palooza this weekend, I'm not sure I'll be able to get that first coat on before Wednesday. I'm not freaking out over it, though. It's not like the paint that was there was really doing much.

All for now!

christina