The Painters .......

A nice warming trend has magically appeared overnight.   It's all the way up to 37 degrees this morning.  Rain is supposed to come in next weekend when it's 35 degrees.  We just might get some snow here in sunny California.

As you can see, we spent a lot of time on the couch yesterday.  If you didn't know, my little Cooper is a poodle, but I'm not fond of poodle cuts, so he's a very messy fluffy bishon-looking kid.  There will be no haircuts for a couple of months since he gets pretty cold, which is why he's always laying very close to me.  

He's been obsessed with the men walking around the outside of the building.  No one could sneak in here without him noticing, setting off the alarm.  If he missed the car in the driveway, Jonathan will let him know.  THAT kid has epic hearing, followed by the same little chortle every time that sets off the barking alarm.  It never fails. 

Having finished their other job, the two painters are now here every day.  First thing, they power washed the areas that needed painting.  Two days later when it dried, they began scraping off all the old paint that was loose.  I was amazed at how it just fell off on the ground.  

I had all the trim repainted in 2009, so it's been 13 years.  Is that good for paint?  I have no idea, but I know if it's not repainted, rot will set in.  So far they have found a couple of window molding sections that were rotten and replaced them.  This entire top wall had to be caulked between the shingles to keep water out.  

I'm very glad they are doing such a good job, unlike the last guys.  Luckily I kept all the old paint cans so getting something to match was easy as pie.

Although I thought that wall would be all there was to paint, they found section after section like this where the paint just fell off when they looked at it.  My wallet is panicking!  The closer I looked at the entire house, the worse it got.  Okay, we're painting ALL the trim on the ENTIRE house while I've got them here.  

To show you how nice they are, they even brought me their leftover lunch pizza ... barbecue chicken.  It turns out I know many of their family members from my days in the construction business at the rock plant.  We crushed rocks left by the old gold dredgers into sand and gravel.  They hauled it.  It's a small world.

No, in spite of our trying, there was no more gold to be found.  We set up sluices to recover everything we could, but those dredgers did an amazing job and left nothing in their wake.

You won't believe it ... these guys even repaired the gutter that someone who shall remain nameless backed in to many moons ago.  We are talking NICE guys!!!

Today the scraping and caulking continues, followed up by primer before the REAL painting begins.  I'm thankful that 90% of the house is masonry and does NOT need to be painted.  It will be a relief to get this off my shoulders, but the lightening of my bank account will be nerve wracking.  Time to turn up the "cheap" and start saving again because I have that other little place in the desert that needs the entire house painted.

On another front .... the result of the water test .... although this was Cole slaw and NOT lettuce ..... it was crispy and delicious, but the biggest mess you ever saw trying to get the water out with my salad spinner.  We are DONE with that trick.  Maybe lettuce would be easier to deal with because the pieces are so much bigger.

A quick trip to town for pie crust material resulted in the find of the century.  Have you tried THESE?  Oh my goodness!!!!  These are the best Oreo cookies EVER!  I could have eaten the ENTIRE package!  There's really not much crunch, but boy are they high on flavor.  I'm a toffee caramel fan and they are delicious!!  If I don't eat them all first, they will become a pie crust.

I finally got off the couch to do a little sewing, but the pink haze coming through the window and giving a beautiful glow to the house made me rush outside to watch this sunset.  The painter on the roof had an even better view than I did.  It was the perfect ending to a lovely day as I ate just one more of those cookies.

I'm going to get more "before" pictures today, followed up by a nice two mile run (when it warms up of course), then I've got lots of flowers to chop down.  I thought coleus would survive the winter, but alas, I learned they are NOT perennials.  Who knew?