Auf der Mauer

Speaking of Tom Sawyer, we decided to whitewash our fence. But unlike Tom, we didn't manage to talk our friends into doing the work for us.

We're on a hill -- the whole town is on a hill -- so our lot slopes. It's higher in the back than the front, and Dr. Hart decided to build a waist-high retaining wall around the front of the house. That allows the house to sit at ground level without putting the entire back of the house underground. It also means that if you're standing on the sidewalk in front of the house, it appears to sit up on a mound, because it is.

At any rate, the paint on this masonry wall had been steadily flaking off since forever. It finally got bad enough that we decided we needed to repaint it. A simple job, and one we could do in our spare time when the weather was nice. Like right now.

Like any painting job, the painting is the easy part. All the real effort goes into preparation. So Kathy and I started by scraping off some of the loose paint. While that was satisfying, it wasn't getting all the old paint off. So we kicked it up a notch and used a wire brush on a power drill. That was better... but still not quite enough. So we took a break, rented a pressure washer, and really went to town on the wall. Pressure washers are fun if you're careful not to cut off your foot with the high-speed stream.

The wall also has some serious cracks in it. They don't go all the way though, so there's no risk to the integrity of the wall itself, but they're ugly and needed to be patched. We used a combination of ready-mix concrete patching compound (hard) and concrete filler (soft) to fill the cracks and holes. The patching compound dries up really hard (duh), so don't use any more than you absolutely need, because it's hard to remove afterwards. It took a few hours with the angle grinder to smooth it out.

Once all that was done, we wiped TSP all over the wall to remove any traces of mold, grease, adhesive, or whatever. That was followed by some elastomeric masonry primer, which looks watery and useless, like nonfat milk. Time for a lunch break while the primer dries.

Monday afternoon we finally got to the painting part! Kathy and I split the chores, she with the brush and me with the roller. We managed to keep pace with each other and finished the first coat of the entire wall in maybe six hours. Not too bad.

The next morning we put on a second coat, and now it looks pretty good. With any luck, this should last another 20 years or so.

A lot of people stopped by to give words of encouragement or to wish us well. "You kids are doing great!" someone said.

Kids?