Summer is Here!

It was a warm weekend. Temperatures were in the mid 80’s both days. I had a hard time getting motivated to work Saturday, but put in several solid hours of painting on Sunday, as did Jenn. Jenn started painting color in the master bedroom and sitting area while I painting primer in the closet, master bath, upstairs hall, 2nd bedroom, and 2nd bath. The master closet, master bath, and upstairs hallway are ready for their finish coasts, but I didn’t finish either the 2nd bedroom or bath. Jenn put two coats of the dark blue on the master entry area, but put a single coat of the lighter painting the bedroom and sitting areas. I think it’s going to look nice. A friend of our, Shawn, has volunteered to help us paint tonight. We haven’t completely decided if we will accept his offer yet or not. It probably depends on how hot it gets up there since the forecast calls for temperatures exceeding 90. Despite that, my goal is to have all primer painting done by the end of this up coming weekend. We’ll see.
However something that may compete with my painting time is the porch decking. We ordered the decking from Parr lumber and it should arrive this Wednesday. Yippee. After much hand wringing, I decided to go with the 2x6 tight-knot cedar. I think it will look nice. The porch decking turned out to be more than I expected, nearly $2000. I will still need to build the railing, probably sometime this fall.
We invited over for dinner Wednesday evening a couple who have been friends with Jenn for a long time. The guy, Jason, is a professional tile setter. He helped me put a tile order together, something I was concerned about doing correctly. In the past, I’ve only dealt with cheap tile from Home Depot. I would buy some tile, tile until I ran out, and then drive back to Home Depot for some more. But, since these are much nicer tiles that are painted in small batches, I wanted to make sure I got the right amount with only one order. With Jason’s help, I think we will. We placed our order at Daltile and it should arrive on Friday. The tile was less than I thought (how often does that happen?), about $700 including shipping costs. The dealer gave us Jason’s contractor discount. That was good. In addition, Jason provided some useful tips including reinforcing the tub decking with some 1/2” cement board to make it stronger and more resistant to cracks. Good stuff.
The bid on putting a metal railing on the balcony came in it at over $1000. So, I have decided to put in a wood one instead. When I was ordering the porch decking I completely forgot to include enough for the balcony. Oh well. I will have to get this done before the end of the summer. Fortunately we’re talking about a small space and I can probably get the wood on my own using Sioux’s truck. At this same time, I’ll probably get all the wood for the porch railing.
I registered for a two classes at Portland Community College this term. The first one is on how to lay down wood floors, the second one is how to sand and finish wood floors. Very cool. I think the total cost is something like $60. Money well spent, I’m sure.