As I’ve briefly mentioned a couple of times, one of my current projects is painting the upper balcony.
We’ve been here almost 6 years (SIX!) and it was looking fairly dire. I doubt it had been painted in the last maybe 15 years? I decided it was time to stop dithering and take action over the Xmas break – okay, to be fair, it was only one day over the Xmas break and one day last weekend. But yay, Action!
it was all pretty much like the upper section
that middle area – ugh
I’ve completed one coat and am about halfway through the second. I’m painting with a brush, rather than roller – a little easier, but much slower. The wall of house is has a really awful textured effect, which means takes forever to get into all the nooks and crannies. The brush means the coats are reasonably thickish, but I suspect it might need a third coat (especially that bit in the first photo!), because it’s exposed to pretty extreme temperatures and tons of pollution – with no cover/shade.
I should be able to knock over the second coat tomorrow and then reassess. There’s still a bit to complete after the walls are done – trim, the door, and door and window frames – but those are relatively small jobs. Hopefully all done by maybe mid-Feb – not to put too much pressure on myself! It’s kind of nice to get out there with a paint brush and audiobook.
Ideally what we’d like to do is put up some sort of pergola or awning, so that we might actually use the space (at the moment it is a horribly hot wasteland). That might make it to the list of ThePalace(OfLove) Action Items for the year – along with finally having our two non-working air-conditioners replaced.
What is going to make it to the list is a bunch of little maintenance tasks that we’ve been putting off. We’ve done a couple already (caulking etc) and it has been very satisfying! Much like everything else in life – you put off doing things because you’ve built them up to be hard and time-consuming, then when you actually force yourself to do them find they’re easy and take like 30 minutes.