kevin_standlee | Painting Progress

Lisa has been painting the front porch when weather cooperates. You can't paint when the wind blows because of the blowing sand, and it's windy here a lot. Lisa said she was thinking of stringing up floodlights so she could paint at night when it was more pleasant and when the winds seem less likely to blow dust all over her paint job.

Here's a good example of the ongoing progress. Lisa painted the lower two steps with the test quart a few weeks ago, but did the top last Wednesday starting to use the three gallons we bought on my last trip home. The color matches, the only difference being that the lower steps have had time to get dusty. She's also started on the much more painstaking part of painting the trellis to the right. You can see how little of the old paint remains on the main deck itself.

Although things stay preserved in the desert much better than in rainy Oregon, we still need to get paint on this porch before next winter to preserve the wood. Besides, it looks much better and more lived-in this way. That's one reason Lisa started with the steps that face the road: for casual passers-by, they can see that there are people living here and taking care of the property again, after it sat vacant for the better part of a year.