House Painting will be the death of me :)

A couple of months ago my lovely wife and I decided that we were going to take a vacation. Now, if you know us this is something that we haven't done in nearly 4 years (not counting the time off for the babies, which is hardly a vacation). We picked a week and just decided to fly by the seat of our pants. We went camping for 3 days, which was quite the adventure with two kids under the age of 3 in a tent. With no plans and fairly decent weather in the forecast we also decided that it was time to finally paint our house. For those of you who know, we have been attempting to paint our house for nearly 4 months, but with the weather the way that it has been we haven't been able to. We got back to our house around noon on Sunday and set out on the journey to have a perfectly painted home.

It started off not all that bad. The weather was a little warm but we didn't realize that it was going to get much worse. We initially thought that we were going to spray on, but the sprayer said not to spray if the humidity is 75% or higher. Of course being in Iowa, in August, the humidity is 80%+, so roller here we come. The paint went on well, but with horizontal siding we had to use brushes to make sure we had an even coat on the bottom of the boards. We didn't figure that this portion was going to take quite as long as it did.

The temp continued to increase and at one point when I was driving to the gas station to get pop the tempurature at the bank said 112. That's right 112 and we are painting. The paint at this point was almost immediately drying. For those of you who have ever painted before you know that that means trouble for an even coat. To make a long story short, our one coat paint now turned into 2 or 3 in some spots.

During our "time off" we spent 6 days, with an average of 7 hours painting, trimming, hanging shutters and finally have something to be very proud of. The electrician that was working on the house next to us said that if we could make it through a project like this without killing each other, we were meant to be. I am proud to say that I am still sleeping in my bed with my wife and still married :)

On another note. During our vacation we did do a few fun things. We took the girls to the Science Center. I know, I know, what kind of nerds take their kids to a place to learn during a vacation? Well now you know two parents that will. We went to the Iowa State Fair (greatest fair in the world), walked around for a bit and went swimming. Overall, it was a very productive vacation and let the girls experience some new things, which is something that we can all say with the activities of the week.

Here is a picture of the finished product. The top picture is what it looked like when we purchased the home (minus my wifes superior landscaping skills and a new roof)