Painting/Staining the House + Finnur’s 42nd Birthday

Bjarki testing the high-pressure washer.  You can see the stripes on the wall after Finnur washed it.  Also visible are the numerous paint samples we tried while deciding on a color.  It turned out our house wasn’t really blue anymore, but more of a washed-out gray with a blue undertone!

The weather was extremely cooperative. I don’t remember wearing summer dresses multiple days in a row in my youth!

Halli came over to help out for a bit, and give advice, since he’d done something similar in recent memory.

Finnur washing the house, which darkened noticeably, as the salty over-shell was washed off (we think!?).  The uppermost wood-work on that side of the house was in really bad shape, and Finnur ended up replacing one whole board.  Next year we may end up replacing all of them… we’ll see.

Ridiculous air temperature! 24°C is 75°F. Sweet though!

Adorable Emma getting ready to run over to her visit her friend.

Off she goes! Somehow this three-and-a-half year old munchkin has now graduated to hollering that she’s going to visit her friend, exiting the house, crossing the street, and the playground to enter his backyard. By. Her. Self.

Seeing how we’ve not used the tv antenna since we moved in five years ago, Finnur got tasked with removing it entirely. Sorry birds! No more sitting there and pooping on our deck for you!

Emma soon showed up with her friend and his sister to play for a bit. Yes, another crazy warm day!

Santa Claus arrives!  What a beautiful gizmo!

We’d been wracking our brains over how to deal with the upper level above the garage, and finally decided that a boom lift out front would solve all our problems. We got super lucky and managed to rent one that morning, and since a long holiday weekend was about to start, we got to keep it until the following Tuesday, only paying for our estimated two days of usage.  Sweet!

We had sort of decided on a color, but just to be on the safe side, I painted a large swath with the remainder of the test-bucket. The color got approved by all, and we could move on to buying lots of paint.

Working above the tricky garage. Persistent droplets had ‘painted’ the woodwork algae-green in places so it needed to be cleaned.

Bjarki was excited to ride and spray!

Anna going up while Bjarki paints a smiley face.

Finnur showing our neighbor how to operate the boom lift. Happily, our neighbor could clear some time to paint along with us, so the house wouldn’t look all wonky.

I didn’t do a whole lot that day (biggest achievements were painting that blue swath, and securing the boom lift) so to calm my nerves I went out for a jog late in the evening. This photo is taken at 23:26.

Overlooking a golf course at 23:38, with a fair bit of light still out.

By the turn-around-point by the lakeside gazebo, at 23:51.

Making my way back to civilization at 00:06 (yes, 6 minutes past midnight). Summers in Iceland are weird!

Slow moving sunset still going on at 00:15.

Finnur gets a coconut cake on his 42nd birthday, courtesy of Anna, with a little help from myself.

Halli returned, and put a sealant of sorts on the outer windowsills. Meanwhile, I mostly did the headless chicken dance.  Finnur didn’t want me to start painting anything he was in danger of dripping stain on, so in the end some edges/windows got taped up, and I got most of the white front part painted.

At the end of the day, Finnur’s sister came to give Emma a lift to the summer house at Laugarvatn, where she would stay for the remainder of the long weekend with her grandparents. Adda and Halli took the big kiddos for an overnight stay, so we were free to go out to a stress-free late dinner downtown to celebrate Finnur’s birthday!

All done eating! It was yummy!

Double selfie!

I fetched the big kids around lunchtime, and we discovered the hard way that a lot of food outlets were closed for the long weekend. Thus we ended up at a sushi train place for lunch. The kids loved it!  After they returned home, Bjarki was about to drive me insane with a constant need for attention, so we bribed them with actual money to take the bus downtown, hunt around for Pokemons, and then make their way back via bus when they were done.  It worked like a charm, and kept them away for hours!

Meanwhile, Finnur got to work on replacing a rotten board up by the roof. This task ended up being a lot more complicated and time consuming than we anticipated mostly because it was hard to stain the new board to match the old ones.  Notice that Finnur is up on the “third floor”!

Our neighbor beat me easily in painting the front of the house.  He’s a machine!  The tree is hiding what I’d already painted on our side though!

A slight difference in color!

I stubbornly kept on painting after dinner. I was too close to being done with the front to quit, and the weather was awesome. This is taken at 22:22.

The view behind me at 22:23.

The view in front. Sigh!

At 23:04: Not much left now at all!  Just this bit, and the not-shown tricky bit above the window.

I used the boom lift to get myself up onto the garage roof, and then as a support to hold on to as I stood on the roof and painted.

23:05. Light approaching sub-optimal.

The area up by the intersection of the roof and the wall took longer to paint than I wanted, but at 23:53 I was ready to call it a day!

Our neighbor helping out with the scaffolding. My shoulder wasn’t up for lifting much over my head. Notice the missing board.

Later in the afternoon. my brother Bjarni arrived to help out. At this point the replacement board was up, and I’d painted the lower half of the side of the house.

Bjarni got tasked with removing all the tape off of the windows on the front of the house.  Excellent man gear!

Getting silly!

We called it a night at 23:28, when a quarter remained of the backside, and also of the side-side, painting wise. Staining wise there were still lots of jobs to do!  (We didn’t paint any white on the backside of the house, as we’d recently painted it all.)

Our weather luck ran out on the Monday, with epic showers. We did manage to do some work in areas sheltered from the rain, but mostly we took it easy that day.

So. Close!  Our neighbors had decided to finish painting their half later in the month, as they were going on vacation.  Their unfinished upper level was a nice reminder that we’d actually managed to get stuff done!

To document things properly: this is the paint we used.

The paint color was NCS S 7020 R80B.

Goodbye awesome machine! It was nice knowing you!

The Smurfette smufing some smurf on the smurf.  The weather was back to cooperating.

Already 6 pm, but we were slowly getting there.

Yay, one of the top portions done! Finnur came to my rescue and did the parts I couldn’t reach. Long arms can be very helpful!

With all the blue painting done, I was done too.  Just really done.  I took off with the kiddos on the Wednesday (later post), and was utterly unhelpful on the Thursday. Finnur meanwhile Just. Kept. Going. staining the eternal woodwork. He kept staining and staining, probably in the hopes that he would get away with not staining it again in the near future. We’ll see!

For the first time since we moved in, all the windows got stained, also the hard to reach ones.  Bring it on winter!!

The back area all cleaned up, and we about to declare the project over. The next morning we returned the scaffolding, and that was the end of that!  Phew!