Well, it's OK. I mean, I chose to do this, but I did TOTALLY underestimate the amount of time this would take. I am painting my own house.
First the scraping...
Worst task on the face of the planet: scraping the house. Wearing a half-mask with cannisters in 100F weather is just awful. Replacing caulking is not so bad, but many of my shingles were (IMHO as a novice) too far apart. So I caulked between those, too. Then I primed with lead-binding primer.
Staining was visible in the scraped zone of the lead-binding primer, so i went over it with Kilz. re-caulked the windows, etc.... all the prep took a LOOONG time. Also, in that time frame, we had 105F weather, so I did not work on those days (there were 2 days of that.)
Then on Sunday, I pushed some painting through, and now have this on the side:
the bottom part is double-painted. the part close to the camera still needs another coat. Then on Sunday I went to the Home Depot to get a decent scaffold. And am doing this:
I'm changing the color of the triangle in the front...going from very very dark brown to a caramel color. I love the lighter color and the artwork will show up better against the lighter color. The ceiling above will be the rust color. it then matches the cob sculpture on the porch, which I am also in the middle of refinishing (re-surfacing and weatherproofing.)
In the midst of all of this, I discovered that I have carpenter ants. And I can't put that off. After I get the front and side completely done I am taking a break to do something -ANYthing- else. Wouldn't it be awesome to read a book? lol!
Anyhow. Gobble-gobble...there goes my summer, but the result will rock, so it's all good.