It Was Paint Primer Day Today

With rain yesterday morning before we woke up that lasted until 10am, painting the porch was not an option. Now today some readers might think I am insane deciding to paint today because our weather was going to be in the 90s today and Wednesday and then on Thursday the temps drop to highs in the 70s. I started today thinking I could get the primer on the porch before 11am when it would be hot and then in the afternoon I could move inside and start painting my living room while in the AC air.

It wasn't so much that the living room needed painting but I personally needed to get rid of that blue accent wall and the light lime green walls behind it. I knew with that dark color I would need to cover the wall in primer. Since I changed my mind at the suggestion of a worker at Lowes a few weeks ago, I was going to have to put on two coats of primer. Believe it or not KILZ, which can cover about anything, couldn't cover the "blue wall from hell" in one coat. 

With a little bit of paint left in the quart can I did a second coat as a test. It was round that wall plug and below it. I knew then I had to go buy some more primer and do the whole wall in a second coat. With that second can in hand, the lady that helped me last week with the primer and choosing a color for my porch saw me and what I had in my hand. I showed her this photo.

She agreed I needed a second coat and needed to cover that blue up as much as possible. BUT ... she recommended a different primer, one that I had in my hands a few weeks ago until a different Lowe's employee recommended I use KILZ after he saw the photo of the blue wall.

She said that other primer would have taken one coat and no signs of blue anywhere. What's that electrical plug halfway up the wall about? Previous owners liked their tv mounted on the wall. They took the wall bracket to hold the tv and left me the holes, bad holes, that I patched last spring. The current tv on the cabinet I use for video games will block that plug in from view.

I didn't paint this wall last year for two reasons. (1) possible laziness (2) my local real estate agent told me if I was going to list the house for sale not to paint any of the rooms. Yes ... I did think about selling within months of moving in. It was still a hot market with overpriced houses. Also, remember it was about this time last year where I was battling "airport landing lights" pointed at my house at night and a neighbor that couldn't quite understand what I was trying to tell her. Plus the Huachuca Mountains were really pulling at my brain cells.

Once I decided this year that I was staying here I put the "to do" list together and painting at least two possibly three rooms were on the list for this fall after the summer cooled off. The longer I live here the better I like the house and where I live. I have always loved the city I am in but a lot of mind games happened when I would remember my mountain views sitting on my patio in Sierra Vista.

It was easy and fast to cut in the trim. With a good trim brush I still have a steady hand and have never needed to use tape to protect the wood trim in any painting job I have done. I also put two coats of primer on the porch while following the instructions for putting on a second coat. Weird primer, then I remembered it is also a sealant for concrete. Tomorrow after the morning dew is off the grass, a sign things are dry enough to paint, I will apply the paint to the porch and see if one coat will do the trick.

With rain possible (30%) chance on Thursday at noon, that second coat, if needed, will have to wait for dryer days. Once that porch is painted tomorrow I will drink 20oz of ice water and prepare to paint the living room. What about the dogs ??? Well it was too hot for them to stay outside so I found out that my love seat and couch were great hallway blockers. The hounds and the dog had AC, the bedroom, the computer room and the hallway . The hallway is where they spend most of their time sleeping during the day with the AC on anyway.

That photo was taken while the paint was still wet. An hour later when everything had dried it was one solid color with no striping anywhere.

A month after I had moved in last May 2021, the front part of the yard looked like this. I raked out the rock about 3" deep then, gave it to my friend for him to use to erosion prevention down in his woods, which is up the street. I had done a similar job when I moved in the house up north in 1997, so I knew I could turn that gravel parking space into a grass yard.

You would have thought with it looking that nice with brand new top soil, new grass seed and some fertilizer a month later I would have had grass this spring. Didn't even come close. Heavy rains washed most of the seed out into the street a few weeks later and what seed was left the birds would eat.

I tried again this spring with more top soil, new seed ... three months later, results were nothing to write home about. Then August 19th I am at a different nursery where a lady held up a bag of grass seed that was made in the local area and made for this local hard as rock clay. She saw my August photo of this area and told me what I was buying would work. If you remember I also added the burlap rolls over the top of the seed to keep the birds away, the sunshine at a minimum and the seed in place. I had a lot of grass sprouting within ten days.

I mowed this just last Saturday and mowed it again this afternoon after I finished cleaning my paint brush and roller. If you see bare spots or dirt spots, there is new grass coming up in every one of those spots. I cut it at a high blade height, over 3" high.

I know that most come here to see the hounds and the dog instead of reading what I have to say and that is fine, no problem. So with that in mind and no new photos of the hounds and the dog since a post on Saturday, I went back into my Photos Library on my computer and scrolled to this time last year, September 2021. Here are a few photos I pulled from that date range.

You will see that Watson has grown a lot this past year and he isn't even close to being finished growing.

As you see life doesn't change much around here, although the couch looks a little darker than it is now after a year of abuse. They said it was 'dog proof' and so far they were right. I would still rather have the old leather couch and chair I had up north but I gave that away when I moved to Sierra Vista. What I have will work I guess. 

Days like today remind me, whether I accept it or not, I am getting older. Although I don't feel tired until all the dust settles, I am cleaned up and I sit down. Then, it hits me.

The leaves are just starting to turn color here in "the tropics" of southern Indiana. Paint Day tomorrow.