paint party

On Sunday some folks came out to help us with some of the few tasks we could gang up and conquer with minimal skill sets. 

We scheduled to kick things off at two o'clock on a beautiful Sunday afternoon. We figured people might start stumbling in around four o'clock, opting instead to spend the heart of the afternoon climbing, biking, lounging in the sun. But we were wrong. Two o'clock, we show up with the paint and supplies followed by a steady stream of volunteers. I guess free beer, margs, and chips & guac is fairly persuasive - or we have great friends. I'll go with the latter. 

The major tasks were painting the patio fence and painting the interior brick wall. Zoey and I agonized over the color of the brick wall the day before and decided in the end to put it to a vote. The choices were a pretty bright orange and a teal-y, turquoise-y, blue. The vote split down the middle, I thought I had cast the deciding vote of blue only to have Zoey return from Home Depot with 4 cans of orange paint. We've only been married a year yet I can see how much weight my vote gets (wink, wink Zoey).

While Zoey and some others hit up Home Depot* for the brick paint, a hard working crew descended on the patio fence. They were flying through this task and soon I called Zoey to tell her that she needed to hurry up because our volunteer army had whipped this fence into shape in no time and would soon have nothing to do but devour our beer and margs. 

By the time Zoey returned the fence was practically done. I broke out the chips and guac and there was a nice little lounging session as we broke in the patio with some camping chairs and our sweet foldout picnic table. 

Easy task done, a crew hit the brick wall while others split up to take on a variety of tasks. The Doyle-Covington clan was in full force, representing a hard working family. Ben, his brother Pete, their sister Adele and Pete's girlfriend Jen (who came all the way in from Oxord, England) helped woodmaster Shwanito tackle the sanding, cleaning and priming of the benches (as well as removing hundreds of staples from the back- thanks guys), while Ben's wife Carrie took charge of prepping the interior painting areas. 

John and Laura tackled the exterior trim. Thankfully Laura hadn't dug into the margs before getting up on a 10' ladder. Sort of kidding Laura but I will give you credit for recognizing that drinking tequila and ladder work are not a good combination. 

Jenny, Josh, Karen and Kyra began tackling the brick wall, each with their own distinct style. Jenny swears by the horizontal roller and I have to agree with her, it's a good trick for the painting toolbelt. 

Slowly but surely things whipped into shape. Pizzas arrived and we all agreed on two things - none of us could remember the last time we ordered Domino's and that it really wasn't that bad. Unfortunately large pizzas ain't what they used to be in college and those pies were housed in no time. 

Walls looks great. Patio fence looks so much better. This is actually starting to look like a respectable establishment. 

Many many thanks to all those who generously gave up their beautiful Sunday afternoon to help us complete a couple of very important projects that we just didn't have time to conquer alone - John and Laura, Jenny and Josh, Ben and Carrie, Pete and Jen, Shwanito, Liz, Little I (or little Sly), Oliver, Karen, Kyra and Adele. 

*We tried to support a local business instead of getting our supplies at Home Depot. Instead of opting for the tried and true McGuckin's we decided to give a shot to a certain store whose name I won't print here but we were hoping since they are a specialty store they would provide better customer service and be able to help answer some questions we had. But not only was the guy behind the counter rude and unhelpful but he reeked of cigarettes and last night's booze bash. I'm all for supporting local independent business, but they also need to be good businesses. Just venting as nothing chafes me more than crappy customer service. 

You can see what uniform coverage we are getting on the wall. This is after the jug of margs was broken out which I think influenced the rate of productivity immensely.