August 2013: Garage, August 9. 2013

It's Friday, and after sending my resume off to be checked by my unemployment counselor (after working on it too long!), I decided it would be a good day to spend some time on the garage.  The south side of the garage.  The south side is harder to scrape than the north side.  On the north side, in many places the paint will peel off in large chunks--there would be no adhesion to the wall in large areas, so I can get quite a bit off in one go.  The south side has better adhesion, so I can only peel paint off in small section. 

This is what an hour and a half--or was it two hours?--of scraping looks like on the south side of my garage.  Yuck.  I've got a long way to go.  I think this side will be much easier to take care of using a power washer to blast the paint off.  But I'm going to try scraping for at least a little while.  It got warm being in the sun, though, even though the weather is not warm.

This evening I went back out and worked on the north side of the garage for an hour and a half.  Some of the boards are nearly done, which is very nice.  It's harder to work on here because of the shrubs.  Perhaps two summers ago I should've re-painted the garage before planting the shrubs!  (The shrubs were re-located from the front of my house.  I didn't like them, they reportedly are not plants that take sun well, and the front of my house faces west, getting the full brunt of the afternoon sun.  I planted Pinky Winky hydrangeas there, because I was told they were the only hydrangeas that could take the brunt of the sun.  This summer at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum, I saw some snowball type hydrangeas in full sun and blooming beautiful.  Rats.  I'm not overly fond of the Pinky Winky with their cream-turns-to-dusty-pink cone blooms, because I love the large white snowball blooms.  But that's neither here nor there.)

I did a little research on peeling paint.  Paint can peel for many reasons, including improper preparation (dirty walls), moist surfaces, the wrong type of paint used, or too many layers.  I really don't know the problem here is, but it doesn't matter.  It's important for me that the wood be clean, dry, and scraped before I prime before painting.  And that the primer is dry before I attempt to paint!  You can see the green of my house (half of the front is still wood, and painted) on the trim around the door, above.  I have seen pictures of my house blue, and have seen blue on the house, so I know it was blue previous to this green.  As I'm scraping, I'm seeing evidence of a darker green color (forest green), so I have a feeling that was another previous color.  It's a little research!  And while I'll be painting the garage white again, I am starting to think of what color I want to paint the front of the house and the trim.  Since it's not a whole house, I'm wondering if I can go a little bold with the color--maybe a bright blue or even yellow.  Some of it will depend on my front door situation--and what color I decide to paint that!