A Certain European Charm

So this is what our house looks like now. A house with an exoskeleton.

We finally decided to paint the house. Okay, we decided to paint it a long time ago, but now we're doing something about it. As in, hiring someone else to do it.

Kathy and I have always painted our own houses. We painted the previous house twice in the space of a few months because we didn't like the first color we picked. The point is, we're not afraid to climb ladders and get dirty. (Well, Kathy isn't. She climbed up on the roof and painted the chimney last time while I, uh, carried the paint cans and steadied the ladder.) But this house is different. There's just no way we can reach the top floor and there's just too much old paint to scrape away. So it was time to call in the professionals.

We talked to three different painters and all three gave us roughly equal estimates. I took that as a good sign: at least agree it's going to be hard work. In the end, we chose Jon Stuefloten Restoration Painting because old buildings are his specialty. Coincidentally, we met Jon through the Point Sur Lighthouse. Like us, he's a volunteer there and he got the job of removing the 19th-century lead-based paint and restoring the lighthouse. We figured if he can do that job, he can do anything. He also painted the Carmel Mission last year, so the man knows his stuff. Plus he's a nice guy.

Reaching all the nooks and crannies of the house became his problem. At first, he was leaning toward using a bucket lift (a "cherry picker") to reach the top floor, but then how do you drive it into the backyard? We've got steps up from the sidewalk just to get into the yard, and very narrow passages around the side of the house. Jon had a carpenter plan out a big wooden ramp up from the street that the painters would use to drive the cherry picker up into the yard. That looked doable, if awkward. But then the painters tried using the cherry picker on another job and pronounced it unstable. They didn't like the way it swayed, so that whole idea was canned.

Scaffolding was Plan B. It took a crew of four people two days to erect the scaffolding you see here. Fortunately (and not entirely coincidentally), Kathy and I had already removed all the plants from around the house, so there was plenty of clear footing for the scaffolds. (Not so fortunately, I'd also left a lot of deep open trenches for sprinkler pipe. Sorry guys -- watch your ankles!)

When we lived in Munich, we used to drive around a lot and play tourist, visiting old towns, cathedrals, museums, castles, and whatnot. Inevitably, the buildings were always covered in scaffolding. It got to be a running joke with us. "Have you seen the scaffolds of Berlin? I hear the scaffolding in Paris is lovely this time of year!" Everywhere we went: scaffolds and restoration. We should have bought stock.

Now our place looks like one of those old buildings, hidden beneath pipes, boards, and braces. We get a lot of curious looks from the people on the street. But they take fewer pictures, I notice.