From Gardener to Painter

After spending some time knocking our mutual friends garden into shape, Derek kindly offered to help Robin with the dreaded house painting.  (It was only Robin who was dreading it, Derek was looking forward to another challenge).  We have a Lockwood house, a solid timber house with white painted aluminium cladding on the outside, of which the interior face is inside the house.  The paint on the aluminium cladding turns powdery with weathering, over the years and was overdue for a repaint.  First job of the morning was to rub down any flaky areas of the painted cladding with stainless steel scouring pads, and they did this on two sides of the house.

Preparing for painting

The next step was to paint the walls with etch primer, which gives the undercoat and topcoat a base to adhere to the aluminium cladding.  Robin started down amongst the trees, and Derek worked from the other half of the wall.

Applying the etch primer

Priming almost completed on the first side

They were both ready to come inside and stop for lunch.  “Come on”, said Derek to Robin, “back to work”.  Derek climbed up the ladder and applied the etch primer to the front of the house.

Derek now on to the front of the house

The etch primer dries quickly, so Robin headed back to the boundary side of the house amongst the trees, climbed on the plank supported by a pair of trestles to apply the oil based undercoat. 

Robin painting undercoat on top of the primer

And what was I doing while all this was going on?  In between making cups of tea and serving lunch, I decided to pull a few weeds out of the garden.  It is no secret that I really dislike weeding, and do not profess to be any kind of gardener at all.  But there I was, down on my knees, doing my bit to help tidy up too.  I just know my back will be sore tonight with all this bending!

I’m working too

What’s this?  Oh no, it looks like I’ve uncovered a dead hedgehog lying amongst the weeds, how yuk is that.  But then it moved, and I saw it was not one, but three hedgehogs curled up, sleeping the day away.  A mother and two babies, in fact.  So I left them there, at the base of a bush, and weeded around them.

Three hedgehogs curled up

I was amazed at how much  Robin and Derek had accomplished by the end of the day.  Robin was applying the undercoat, trying to catch up with Derek who was still busy priming away.  It was a good day’s work for both of them, but I guess they will have tired and sore arms after all that painting.

They are still going strong