Savoring the Last of Summer + Cicada Sunset

September is in just a few days. As I sit and journal I am reminded of all the things we did and had fun doing in August. The excitement of fall is coming, but for now I will try to swim in our pool at least a few more weeks and enjoy the front porch before the cold comes in October.

Ahhh, the porch. This architectural feature is the hardest thing to maintain on our home. It sees tons of rainwater in the fall and spring, deals with hard, strong sunight and lots of foot traffic. We had already fixed it once, the first year we lived here. Unfortunately, the first paint job on these boards was very poor and the paint was coming off in sheets. We used an oil-based paint over it trying to make it stronger and save it, but poor adhesion of the first layer did not stop the flaking. Our oil-based paint did very well on our naked boards we had replaced, but the older paint failure did not stop. I cannot describe the frustration this brought us. We buried out heads in other projects and pretended everything was fine.

Finally, we had to do something. More rot was setting in. I hated being on the porch because it bothered me so much. We had new boards put in to replace rot. It turned out that the entire East side had to be re-decked. Ugh. When we first fixed it we did the West side. We had also done patches to the round part.

Now, we did not want to replace boards again, ever. So we rented a floor sander and sanded off all of the crappy paint. This sucked. Plus, we weren’t very good at running the floor sander- it’s pretty wavy. But, we got all the crappy paint off and saw just how amazing the oil-based paint was for our porch. The latex just sat on the surface, the oil-based was sucked into the grain of the wood! This means way better adhesion and stability!

Now paint. Oh, the paint debacle. We could not find affordable oil-based house paint anywhere! We only found some at Sherwin-Williams and it was $75 a gallon! (We needed 2 and 1/2 gallons for this job, plus a gallon of primer for the edges). We had already blown our budget on the wood for the decking at it’s horribly inflated prices. Our local lumberyard still had the same Benjamin Moore paint we used the first time around, but their machine that colors the paint was not there anymore as no one used it. So what to do? We called every Benjamin-Moore dealer within 2 hours of us and NO one had a paint mixer for oil-based paint and most didn’t even carry oil-based paint anymore! UGH!

Then, on top of that I dealt with a lot of blowback for even wanting oil-based paint. Like so many sales/paint people telling me what they would do (a good latex). Well, you have no idea what I am dealing with- does your porch have southern yellow pine tongue and groove floorboards as decking? No? Does it see copious amounts of rain and sun? No? Oh, you don’t even have a porch? So why are you telling me what to do again? Can’t you just show me where the oil-based paint is IF you even have it?

Of course I listed to good advice, but not from people who don’t own or care for older homes.

In the end, this girl just did what artists do- she mixed her own color with tube oil paint, a LOT of tube oil paint. Hubby and I poured all 3 of our Benjamin Moore gallons into a 5 gallon bucket, and put a mixer on our drill and mixed and mixed. It was actually quite fun and we got a color very close to what we wanted!

Then I used a primer coat on the edges of the whole porch. Then two coats of the color and viola! All done!

After the porch was done a little celebration was in order. I took the kids and a friend to the local amusement park where we rode everything we could get in line for including my favorite wooden roller coaster and a beautiful carousel. It was a hot, fun, glorious day!

Afterwards we spent some days preparing to go back to school. A little shopping and some days spent one-on-one with my sweet babies. Treats abounded! The kitchen quickly became the hub of school supplies! Lastly, we all rested before heading back into another school year.

That’s all for now! Hope you are able to squeeze the last enjoyments out of the season while you can. Then we will celebrate the next! Here is a lovely video I made for you. It’s a late summer sunset with my favorite nature noises- cicada songs!

With sunsets and cicada songs to you from Kansas Street,

-Jaime