57. Why?

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A door

Why would I insist on painting a door myself when someone else was offering to have their painter do it? This is a very reasonable question to which I have only questionable answers. For starters, the person offering this painting service has a history of hiring people who do a half-assed job. For other things this wouldn't bother me as much, and I would appreciate the opportunity of dodging some work, but I have a very long history with painting and half-assed painting drives me nuts. But, in this particular case, there are at least three other reasons as well.

While I've been painting since childhood, I didn't learn how to properly paint doors until a few years ago, maybe seven years now, and, given my history of frustrating attempts at door painting with brush and pad, to properly paint a door with a mini-roller is still a thrill for me. (I have very early memories of cleaning brushes with paint thinner and then soap and water -- my father may have very early picked me out as a total sap as he had me cleaning his brushes and the hub-caps of his car only a few years after I learned to walk.)

One of the things I was concerned their painter would fail to do, was to properly prep the door. Because I originally didn't want this door painted (very nice grain in the wood), I did a through job of sanding and varnishing and sanding and varnishing until it looked really good. Unfortunately, water from our laundry room ran out under the door and not infrequently made the bottom edge of the door wet. The wood suffered. It didn't expand or fall apart (maybe in part because of all my varnishing?) but it no longer looked good. And it was always the only bit of the outside of the building not painted "Bone." So I didn't fight the owner's desire to paint the door, so long as it was painted well. Which brings me to my multi-tool.

I bought this power tool on sale years ago and have rarely had an opportunity to use it. One of it's many capabilities is something very similar to orbit sanding. I used it today to rough up the varnished surface of the door prior to priming. It seems to have worked. Just before I started typing this, I put a coat of Bone paint on top of the primer. Not sure if it will require a second coat, I rather think not. If it doesn't look good in a year it will be my fault and I will address it. 

As long as I had the multi-tool out, I put on a grinding surface and smoothed one of the "bricks" that was left too rough by the seismic retrofitters and myself when I finished their work where they had filled in where a couple bricks were destroyed for testing purposes. As I hoped, the grinding makes the surfaces look more like the older brick work. Before I touch-up the paint on those walls, I will bring out a longer extension cord and grind some more. 

And yes, I am eager for the landscaper and professional painter to come and then go, so I can get a shot at finishing up these little things. I'm even going to repaint the gate in our entry even though I think paint on galvanized steel is a lost cause. When I'm finished, the entry should look as good as it did when it was all repainted just a few years ago. (Just looked it up and it was five years! Seems like only three.), 

SF

The photograph below is by Eadweard Muybridge and was taken from near the top of my hill in 1878. 

Just below the intersection in the foreground is what appears to be a small church -- where the wood framed apartment building next door to me now stands. I had no idea there had been a church there. None of the ecclesiastical structures dominating this scene still exist. The onion domes (for lack of the proper term) on the Jewish Temple made for very picturesque debris near Union Square after the 1906 earthquake. What's as remarkable as the changes since this photo, is that all this was built in 30 years -- really less than 30 years since the town kept burning down in it's early days. And this was taken 98 years before I arrived here. 

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