Never start anything

A dozen years ago, it became necessary to repaint the house.

I wasn’t sorry, as I’d never particularly liked the colour. We got two quotes. The first was for grey paint with white trim, the second for nothing but grey paint. Obviously my preference would have been the first, but the second was so much cheaper, no argument could be made in favour of white trim.

The house ended up all grey. Better than the original colour, so a bit of a win.

Which was fine and has been fine for some years.

And then last week the new porch was built downstairs. With fresh wood, it suddenly looked very dreary. I know, I thought, I’ll paint the trim around the door. That will brighten it up a bit. (The door itself cannot be touched as it is the only wooden surface in the building that didn’t get painted brown while I was back in London and thus must be preserved.)

Unfortunately, the doorframe isn’t that big, so painting it white did little to brighten anything up. Hmm.

Perhaps I could just paint the top plank on the porch fence (or whatever it’s called)?

Nah. That just looks silly.

Better, but…

Yeah, the posts had to be done, too. Nice, although now, of course, I wish I had a better chair. Wicker perhaps?

It is pretty sweet to see the front of the house brightened up a bit. What’s that you say? You think I should do the wood coming down from the roof, too? Yeah, I agree. Problem is I bought a litre of white exterior paint for $21 because the doorframe was a small job. Why would I spend $42 on four litres? It was a small  job. Now I’m nearly out of paint, so don’t have enough to do the roof trim. It would be exceedingly galling to have to buy another $21 litre of paint when, for that total I could have bought four litres.

Oh, yes, and what does this photo tell you?

Yes, that’s right. Now the window frames on both floors are positively screaming to be painted white, too, aren’t they? Yes, of course they bloody are. And if I painted the roof trim on the porch they’d be screaming even louder. I might – if I had more paint – be able to manage the downstairs frame, but the upstairs frame? Not on your nelly. And I certainly can’t afford to pay anyone to do it. So now this will annoy for the rest of my life. Sigh.

Oh, and the pure genius of the porch painting is that next spring the accumulation of green slime will show up so much better on the white paint than it did on the grey.

Seriously, never start anything. It’s the road to madness.