Project 14: Pressure Wash the Fence

In the Spring of 2009, we washed and painted half the fencing in our backyard.

This half was not done.

'nuff said.

Delegating still gets the job done!

Here's to help with the Anti-procrastination Project.

Progress!

At first, there was the inevitable panic about the colour. It had the unfortunate characteristic of looking just like the original colour already on the fence when wet--but drying much, much darker. As one passerby commented, "You sure can see where you haven't painted."

Indeed.

Except...driving by this morning after taking hubby to work...my heart skipped a beat. There it was....shining golden in the bright morning sunshine.

Nonetheless, I knew there was a difference. There had to be. The children painted the entire street side of the East Side Fence yesterday. They really did a fantastic job and I am quite proud of them.


I wrote this up last night with the intention of taking the "after" picture this morning, in the same light as I'd taken the before, on Sunday.
Can you see a difference?


Monday being the second day of his weekend, my guy set up his brand new saw



and cut all the boards we need for the three 4x4 raised beds. (That's the west side fence above. No, that string isn't holding it up--that's for the raspberry bushes. ) He even put one half of one together for me.



Nice. (The Rose which shall likely be moved is where the red ball is.)

My daughter cheerfully did the part of the fence there behind the Highbush Cranberry. I'm glad someone in this family is so tiny! Her next challenge is to paint in behind the elderberry bush--just to the left outside this shot.



And there I left it for the day. I figure it would have taken me the last 1/2 of the third can of paint and only a couple of hours to finish. But, we stopped.

Why?
1) Nine to four is probably all the child labour laws will let me work my children.

2) I wanted a shower. 'Nuff said.

3) My daughter had a soccer game at 6:15 and a piano class after that. (Have I mentioned she is sitting her Grade One piano exam in a few weeks? All you music types out there can probably better appreciate that than I can)

4) I was dog tired.

Mother's Day. My Way. (or not).

So, a few weeks ago, the hubby asks me, "What do you want for Mother's Day?"

And I said either;
a) Please finish the fireplace mantel. (It is now his project because it involves the manly Art of Cutting Wood. (I hope I said please.)
b) Let's get the fence painted.
c) Build me the raised beds I want for planting this year.
d) All of the Above.

"That's not much," he replied, meaning, "that's nothing very special."
Except that it is.
It is.

I woke up bright and early this morning, excited. Something was going to happen. We were going to get one of the those projects finished.

For the fence, I just needed to pressure wash the street side of the East fence-- Oh and the inside South corner. The boy and hubby had already done 3/4's of the inside East fence--trying out the new pressure washer my Mother had bought for the family for Christmas. The West fence I was going to tackle Another Time.

So bright and early this morning, I snapped the befores.

Steetside East Fence: (Yep. A wonky panoramic).



Inside East Side South Corner, this morning:

(Yep. That pile o'debris from last summer grew under the snow, I swear).


I really thought the kids and I would paint the fence while hubby built three 4x4 raised platforms for vegetable beds. We have heavy, horrible clay soil. With raised beds, I've been told, I can happily ignore it. The instructions were posted here. In February! Gah. Fortunately I had the forethought to save them. Hubby read them over last night. He said, "Looks simple enough." Whew. Unless my man feels totally confident about the way I want a project done, it doesn't happen. So, thank you, Ree!

Those were my plans.
I would paint, he would build.

The boxes, by the way, are going to go here: eventually there will be four in a foursquare parterre-ish pattern. I just have to move the Rose. She won't like that and neither will I.

This picture is from the end of June last year.



This is the picture taken this morning. Yes, we've been sledging again!



But before washing the fence, I realised I should whack down the long grass now growing along the bottom edge (and no where else, of course.) That meant getting the weed whacker going. No problem, except I broke the string in the first two minutes. And then hubby informs me, he needs the instruction manual to rethread it. He looked in his workshop while I looked in my files: it t'were nowhere to be found. Eventually, he announced he had rethreaded it. After I finished that ten minute job, (which took all morning), I had him haul out the pressure washer for me. Man. I do not want to re-live the horror of trying to get those hoses connected and the thing plugged in and the thing moved outside. Then, inside. And upside down. Yep. It happened. Hubby eventually figured out there were screws to hold the handle onto the machine. All he had to do was tighten them!

And here's what I did to the crosspiece bit of fence in my efforts to remove the mold. Or mildew. Could've been mildew. Whatever it was--it's gone now! Gone with the chunks of wood.....



It was three o'clock before we set off to go to Rona's to get the boards for the raised beds and the paint for the fence. And just as hubby was about to back down the driveway, I cried, "Stop!"

"I forgot the paint swatch."

And then, of course, I couldn't find it.

What I did find, (hooray for no Spring Cure this year!) was last year's two cans of paint purchased as "testers." I made good and sure I picked the proper one--I held both up to the bits of the fence I painted last year. I held it up to the bright side and squinted. I held it up to the shady side (much easier to tell, by the way) and I even got my man out of the waiting Jeep to confirm my choice of can--and we headed off.

The trip to Rona took four hours. (Everything takes four hours.) Well, OK, not quite, but long enough that the next priority was plainly stopping at the grocery store to buy a pre-roasted chicken and a tub of potato salad for supper and come home and eat.

And so, the fence now?


Yep. In the evening light.
Except the skies are grey and threaten to rain. So, maybe it's OK.
Except it would have been something special to have had it painted.
It would.

Progress Report

I'm afraid this gardening thing has been all-consuming. I imagine it would be fairly boring to anyone not similarly obsessed, so I haven't been posting much. However, some small progress has been made!

1) We've started ripping out the sidewalk that runs in front of the dining room window. After taking down the tree, it was very obvious the whole thing was heaved and sloping back towards the house.
Before:


The husband just wanted to "see" how easy it would be to remove it. This is what was accomplished after we took turns going at it with a sledgehammer and a crowbar for a few hours.

(Aurelia's job was to collect the small stones which fell out of the rubble and stockpile them for me.)

This is where we are now:


The whole project had me in a panic for a few days. We must have a path (or "access") leading round to the side of the house here for the meter reader. The city recently extracted all the gas meters and placed them outside our houses. I'm thinking of creating a gravel path--but I'm not entirely sure just where, yet. And I realised that as long as there is access and something shoveled in winter, I don't need to decide its precise location just yet. That's good, because I still don't know what I'm doing!

2) I'd say "we" but I'm really not helping with this at all--the husband and Caius are in the process of removing my strange front bed--the wooden edgings to be precise.

Here's a "before"--looking at it from the front door, out to the street.



Here's what they've managed to take out so far. Those are 4x6 and 4x4 foot posts, bolted together.

There's about a third of it yet to go. Not sure what we'll use the wood for.

I've applied herbicide to all the vegetation and now I need to cut it down.

It really isn't much, but it's hard physical work, so I guess it can't go any faster than our aging backs and muscles allow.

Oh, 3) I did get this tiny section of fence painted!



In case you think it still looks pretty goldy, (as I do) here's a comparison:

That's it for now.

Look What I Found!

It's Delphinium, apparently!
Larkspur.

I've wanted some ever since I read this:



Of course, that was over 30 years ago, now. And I'd forgotten. It's funny what memories can come back when confronted by a plant.

Apparently, too, I'll have to stake them. I hope they will still be visible through the forest of stakes!

********

Planting a purple and orange flower garden wouldn't be so awful, would it?

With my red roof?


*******

In other news: Paint can No. 2 it is, then! It's called "Brown Cattail"--a most excellent name for a gardening fence, I'd say. I'll be renting the power washer this weekend and having at it.

Oh, and 12 years ago? Hubby painted the fence wrong. He painted it with latex, not oil as he should have. Thank goodness. If it had been oil, I would have had to use the same or sand. We tested it with a cotton swab dipped in nail polish remover. Paint came off on the swab: ergo, latex. Cute trick, that.

Behind Can No. 2!

It's not really a fair comparison--the first pictures were taken while a storm threatened and the light was dull. The second, after the storm had passed and in cheerful sunshine.

No. 1 is on the left and No. 2 on the right.





Here's the other side. You can see both:



Are we there, yet?

How 'bout this?

Sorry it's blurry. The paint is dry, now. It looks darker irl (it was supposed to dry darker)--but I don't like it as much. It's just sort of bleh. But I'm curious--is it looking darker to you?
(PS--rain still threatening.)

Stay tuned--as a result of Anne and Wende's input, I went out and got a quart of my second colour choice, the browny/goldish green. I'll post the results (once it has dried, this time!)

How do you test colour on a fence?

It's a serious question!

As I mentioned a long, long time ago, it will take 10 gallons to put one coat on this monster.

I bought a quart (or litre, as I should call it) to test out my colour pick. What do you think?



(Unfortunately, the sun wasn't shining when I took the after pictures--it's threatening rain, again!

Here's a picture from a wee bit further away:



And here's one of the other side: the one folks see when they walk by.



I like it.

I went to paint behind my High Bush Cranberry, but there's mould on the fence. A quick google search has led to the conclusion that I'll need to power wash the fence with some sort of cleaning agent. (sigh).

What do you all think? Is this the way to go?

I'm a wee bit worried that the barks of my tall-shrubs-pretending-to-be-small-trees won't show up in winter. But I don't quite see any way around that given the colour of my house.

The Fence

(No, we didn't suddenly get some snow. This is from January 2004. We musn't forget the longest season of the year when we're planning our gardens.)
While Wende's been looking at lush green things, I've been looking at fences. Ugh. Not nearly as much fun.

But I did find this gem:


Apparently, it's in Maui. (Go figure).

And then there's this one: the playground fence. I think it's wonderful.



My ambitions are not quite so exotic, however. I just want a natural board fence: but given that I am not quite the masochist it seems I need to be, I will be painting it. I have received the go-ahead. I'm not really sure this is a good thing, nor is it entirely non-masochistic. (The best thing would be just to let the paint continue peeling for the next ten years. Alas, I am impatient.) And, you know me, a project isn't complete unless it includes a little painting. In this case, it will be a LOT of painting. The husband said he purchased two ten gallon pails when he painted it 12 years ago. He applied two coats.

In order to approximate the look of a natural fence, I want to paint the thing grey/brown. Surprisingly, google lacks images of dark grey fences. I did manage to scrounge this one.



And this:



It came with a whole article on why dark coloured fences can be a good thing. (The interesting thing about the article wasn't the reasons for having a dark fence, per se, but that I'd already figured them out. Without anyone telling me already. You know you've learned something when....)
Don't get me wrong, I think white fences can be attractive especially when they're as open as this one:



But a white privacy fence?


As my Mother-in-law would say: "Oh my g-d. Give me a break." (As she said repeatedly. Like punctuation). Can you imagine this in winter? My poor eyes.

By the way--Zooza--you have the best fence ever. It's amazing.