Coat Of Many Colors

I have had a few people ask me for an update on the shop, so here we go...

In an earlier blog I mentioned that my hired help had all quit. One of them got a toothache and they never came back. That was over two months ago and I still haven't seen them. I really thought they would at least be back to get their boom box. Since they left I have been kind of puttering along. I think I may have learned a new work ethic from those guys. I didn't have a toothache but I caught cold and didn't feel like working one day so I took a couple of weeks off. Then, while horseback riding I was chewing on a hard piece of licorice and a crown fell off. That cost another week. Then Thanksgiving came around and I gave myself that whole week off.


I'm back to work now have the stucco pretty much finished. Accent color around three more windows and the front doors and I'll have it. It looks... how to describe it? Homemade. I guess that's how it looks. I knew starting out that I didn't know how to stucco, but I went ahead and proved it. I went right after it and pretty much made a big mess. But after all, it's just a shop. I thought that by starting on the sides and back I might know what I was doing by the time I got to the front. The front is the only thing most people will see anyhow. On about the second bucket on the front the battery powered drill I was using to mix the color died on me. I thought it was mixed enough so I put it on. Bad decision. It ended up too dark at the start and too light at the end. I decided the best way to fix it was to paint, so I went to Home Depot and picked the best match I could find. After putting on two gallons I decided it wasn't a very good match, so I took a sample and went back to Home Depot and tried again. What you see below is the result.




Don't get your nose out of joint, I'm not finished. The color on the lower part is the final, and I mean FINAL color. It only warms up enough to paint for about an hour per day, so I paint between two and three pm when the temperature nearly makes 50 degrees. That gives it a while to dry before the sun goes down and takes the temperature with it.


I hope to get the painting done Saturday, then perhaps the accent stucco next week. I have garage doors ordered and they should be installed shortly after that I think. Wouldn't that be a lovely Christmas present to myself, to have the outside all finished!