
As I've mentioned before, Joe and I live our lives in a constant state of biting off more than we can chew. In that spirit, we decided to paint our garage ourselves. Because of Massachusetts lead laws, costs for hiring painters has skyrocketed, so we took on what we thought was a manageable project. I prepped and painted the entire interior of our house (with help from many lovely and wonderful family members), so I was pretty confident in my DIY painting abilities. Joe doesn't paint, but brings carpentry knowledge to the table, so we make a good team. We scheduled the project over two long weekends last month—one for prepping, one for painting—and asked for help from my dad and a few other saints (thank you Tom, Seth, Anne and John!!). We thought that would be plenty of time. Guess what? IT WASN'T!!
We arrived on a Saturday morning armed with HEPA masks, goggles, paint supplies and scaffolding. But just a few hours into it, I started wondering which was more painful: delivering my first born child, or painting the garage. I decided it was the latter. Sensing my agony, Joe took on the role of Chief Cheerleader and encouraged me to keep going. We scraped. And scraped. And scraped and scraped. We stopped passersby on the street, begging for help, and, finally, we ended the long weekend with a garage that looked like the photo above. (Oh, did I mention that we decided to remove the entire facade and have Joe rebuild it?) But don't worry. Since then, Joe has rebuilt the front, and my dad and I tackled priming and painting, though we had to seek Tom Silva's help on two rotted, termite ridden sills.