At ten past six on a Sunday morning in July, the light comes in low over the back fence and turns our garage siding orange for about twenty minutes. The clapboards are cool and a little damp, and nothing on the block is awake except a robin. By 11 the south wall of that same garage is too hot to keep a hand on. That was the whole plan for painting it this month: start at first light, do the sunny walls first, finish in the shade and quit when the heat wins.
What we were working with
The garage is a detached one-car, 12 by 20, built with the house in 1952. It has wood clapboard siding, a wood side door and a steel overhead door from 2006 that we left alone. On the south and west walls the paint had gone past peeling into curling, with gray wood showing in long strips under the eaves. The north side, which barely sees the sun, was mostly sound and a little green.
We had a quote of $2,200 for scraping, priming and two coats. I don't think that was out of line for the labor. It was also more than seven times what we spent. Our total came to $298: four gallons of Sherwin-Williams SuperPaint during a sale for $196, a gallon of exterior primer for $54, and $48 of scrapers, brushes, roller covers, caulk and drop cloths, the cheap ones from Harbor Freight.
Tessa has veto power over every color at the Cape. I floated barn red. She said, "It's a garage, not a personality," and picked a warm white that sits next to the house's white siding without trying too hard.
Three weekends of 6 a.m. starts
The first weekend was really just Sunday, July 6. Saturday morning went to the kitchen pipe with Gary, and Saturday afternoon went to recovering from it. I scraped all four sides with a carbide scraper and a 5-in-1, starting on the south wall while the sun was still low, then the east, and saving the west and north walls for late morning, since they stay shaded until afternoon.
Because the building is from 1952, I assumed there was lead somewhere in the old layers and worked that way: drop cloths pulled tight against the foundation to catch chips, a spray bottle to keep the worst spots damp while scraping, no power sanding, and every chip bagged before lunch. Someone who knows lead-safe work better than I do would probably add steps. That was my minimum.
On the second weekend, July 12 and 13, I finished scraping the gable ends from the 6-foot stepladder. The garage roof is low enough that the stepladder reaches the peak, which is one of my favorite things about this building. I washed the walls and let them dry overnight, spot-primed every patch of bare wood on Saturday afternoon and caulked the gaps where trim meets siding. I left the bottom edges of the clapboards alone so water can still get out. Sunday morning, the first coat went on the north and east walls.
The third weekend finished it. Yesterday was the first coat on the south and west, and this morning was a second coat on those two sun-beaten walls, plus the trim and the side door. The north and east got one coat over primer and sound old paint. I'll look at them again next summer and decide if they need more.
The wall I painted at 11 a.m.
My mistake was on the south wall yesterday. I'd started it later than planned, the sun came around the corner, and I kept going instead of stopping. The paint was drying almost as fast as I could brush it out, and I left lap marks, stripes where wet paint overlapped paint that had already set. The can lists a temperature range, and I learned that a sunny clapboard wall in July runs a lot hotter than the air around it. The second coat this morning hid most of it, but in low evening light you can still see the stripes if you know where to look. I know where to look.
The other surprise was the bottom of the side door jamb. The scraper went in a little too easily for the last six inches or so. I primed and painted it for now and added a line to the house sheet under "figure out later," which is a longer list than I'd like.
Moose supervised from inside the backyard fence for most of three weekends. His one contribution was brushing his tail along the wet corner board on Saturday and trotting around with a white tip until Tessa caught him with a dish towel and a bowl of soapy water. It came out, because it was latex and because she was faster than me.
We have about half a gallon left, labeled and on a basement shelf for touch-ups. Gary wandered over this afternoon, looked at the south wall for a long time and said, "Looks like a garage again." From Gary, that's a compliment.
