187 at 157?

We reeled in a grand total of (wait for it) THREE trick-or-treaters last night…and they came in one trip.  Not exactly the haunted hootenanny we were prepared for.  Turns out that $50 buys a lot of candy and Weezie and I both hauled a fat sack of it to work this morning.

Maybe we can blame the underwhelming treater turnout on the tape strung all around our yard which, at a glance, makes it look like a crime scene:

Our painters started yesterday and the tape is part of their compliance with the lead paint renovation laws enforced by the gub’mint.  If they don’t comply, they leave themselves vulnerable to hefty fines if an EPA agent were to visit the job site.

The sequence of events for the job will be: scrape, sand, wash, scrape again, apply primer x 2, apply top coat x 2.  Right now, the painters are on their first round of scraping, which is done after wetting the wood.  The company we’ve hired owns a fleet of electric sanders attached to HEPA vacuums.  This allows them to safely sand the siding without releasing clouds of lead dust.  It also means that the painters can really lean into their scrapers; any errant gouges or fraying of the wood will be worked out once they get to sanding.  There’s some beautiful, dense, old-growth wood underneath that peeling paint.

I’ve spent a fair chunk of my life with a paint brush in hand: I earned money by painting houses during the summer in high school and more recently painted our house in Chapel Hill, inside and out.  I can convince myself that it’s fun for short periods of time, but the epic amounts of prep involved with this job leave me very happy to leave it in someone else’s capable hands.