Summer Work -2014 III Exterior paint

The siders finished up in mid august.  In this part of the country that means you are only weeks from snow :-).  OK, not really, but the weather does turn fast, and getting a decent shot to paint the exterior means that I had to get on it pretty quickly.  There were a number of details to clean up first, like getting protective mesh over the air intakes to keep critters out (My HVAC guy already found 2 dead birds in the furnace...).  Also caulking various penetrations and getting a number of little details cleaned up.  Plus before I started spraying, I had to poly all the windows and doors.  I was ready to start painting near the end of august.  I took the week of labor day off, plus a couple days at the end of august - roughly 1.5 weeks for paint.  I spent a day covering all the windows I could reach from the ground or from a step ladder.  The next day I picked up the lift.  This was what made it possible to get the rest of this done in a reasonable time.


Here it is.  Small enough to fit on my 16' trailer and light enough that even a half ton truck can tow it, but it can reach over 50' up, and 30' out.

In fact, here I am 30'+ in the air and extended out 15-20' while painting the upper floor on the back side of the house. This is 3 stories on this side.  You can see some standing water as we were having some wet weather while I was trying to get this done, but the broad eaves helped keep things dry for a lot of it.

The rental time on the lift was limited to a week, so I did everything I could that needed the lift for in that time.  Here you see how I did the upper sections of the shop trim first.  Before any trim work was done, I had already sprayed 2 coats of the beige on the entire shop and house (with the lift too).  This was complicated by the fact that the lift blew a hydraulic hose on day 2 and the rental place "fixed" it with an idiot repair that lasted about 2-3 hours.  I lost time with that as it was over the weekend, but I kept going with ladders as best I could, and they extended the lift rental to compensate in the end.

 The house with first coat on trim mostly done.

 The back side of the house with trim complete.  That is where I was taking the photo from in the earlier pics from the lift.

 The north side also was much easier with the lift as all the windows make it hard to find a place to put a ladder.