Wow. That sentence really does not in any way do justice to the hours and hours of back-(or in my case, leg-)breaking labour that went into painting our 225 linear feet of wood. On Friday we painted from 11:00 in the morning till 8:30 at night with only the briefest of pauses for meals. I woke up on Saturday morning and could barely move. My legs were so stiff from the constant standing and crouching as I moved my way from the top to the bottom of the fence boards. I hobbled downstairs like a 90-year-old woman and sat down at the table. Well I tried to sit down. I got partway there and had to fall the rest of the way. My muscles were all, "uh...hell NO!" Hugh had to go back to the paint store for more paint because we had gone through an entire 5 gallon pail on just one half of the fence the day before. I sat at my kitchen table drinking tea, desperately wishing it was already the end of the day, that we were finished instead of just starting on the other side.
We got back outside at 11am again and I handed each of the kids a couple of cookies to try to stave off lunch for a bit. I was literally limping over to the fence, wincing with each step. I may or may not have cried the first time I had to crouch down that day. Once I got going my muscles loosened up a bit but crouching was still fairly agonizing so instead I did two separate stages of painting: what I could reach on my knees and what I could reach standing up. Near the end it was all I could do keep going; my shoulders ached, my legs were trembling and my knees were aching and tender. I had to go back to crouching to give the skin on my knees a break and as I was attempting to paint something just beyond my reach I shuffled sideways a bit and fell over. My legs literally gave out on me. I may or may not have cried, though that might have just been the wind. Did I mention it was incredibly windy the whole two days we painted? It was not at all head-bangingly frustrating the way the dead grass and bits of tumbleweed would blow against, and attach themselves to, the boards we had just oh-so-carefully painted and it was positively delightful the way the oil paint spattered off the roller and blew back into our faces. As I lay on my back cursing the wind, the fence, oil paint - my very existence! - Hugh came and stood over me and said, "How would you like this to be your full-time job?" I may or may not have used some form of sign language to answer him. We finally finished at 6:00pm and I can't remember the last time I was that sore or tired. I officially never want to do that again.
Originally when we were deciding on what kind of fence to build we considered a vinyl fence - no hassle, no upkeep, no painting - but it was triple the cost of a wood fence and at the time we thought, "So we have to paint the fence every couple of years, how bad can that be?" Stupid, stupid, stupid. Two days after we finished painting I was still limping everywhere and falling into chairs to sit down. I'm trying really hard not to think about the fact that we are going to have to do this again at some point down the road. Right now I'm focusing on the fact that it's finished and we can cross it off our Spring "To Do" checklist. Next up: Painting the front door and back screen door. Right now our front door is white against cream siding and I've never been a fan so we're painting it black. We also just bought a wooden screen door for the back which I'll also paint black. Plus I finally found some bedding for Ava so we can now do our kids' room switcheroo, both of which will need painting. And last on our "To Do" list, we scored four Adirondack-style (I think they're actually called Muskoka) chairs and a wooden table for free off of our local Freecyle group that, surprise, surprise, also need painting.
Aren't they great though? Imagine that our grass is green and not dead, also, please note our newly-painted fence in the background (and my camera-hog 2-year-old who spent the entire time I was trying to take a picture of this furniture yelling "cheeeeese" to the camera and refusing to move out of the way). Anyway, can't you just picture those chairs Robin's Egg Blue? Not sure what we'll do with the little table yet but you can guarantee it'll get painted! By the time all these projects are done I will be such a pro I probably could get a job as a painter. I never will though. Never. Never. Never.
