Up the ladder.. down the ladder.. up the ladder.. down the ladder. And, we DON'T use a carpenter's level to get the second-hand, painted cedar siding nailed straight onto the side of the house.
Hey, Patti and I are artists, right? I mean, we can see a picture hanging crooked on a wall from a mile away. Who needs a level?? So we simply hammer the piece on with a single nail, then take a step back to check for straightness, (yep, yep that's straight alright)..then bang some more nails into the piece and move on up with the next strip to repeat the process.
Well, this all works fine and dandy when one is working on ground level but once you're high up on a ladder it becomes a bit precarious to take a "step back" and visually check to see if each strip is on straight and level.
So Patti (having the better eye for straightness than myself and I being somewhat more adept at ladders), Patti takes the position of "ground control" letting me know if the piece is level to the one below it, whilst I risk life and limb high up on the ladder. (It is kinda wobbly and spooky climbing way up there. Here's a pic from on high and looking down. Hope I don't slip and break something.)
Ah yes indeedy.. We be PROS at this! and we work together well.
So Listen in to a couple minutes of our actual conversation :-) :-)
Damn straight it's straight!
After we got the siding on and painted all nice, Patti started working on the outside basement entrance plywood covers (seen here at the bottom of the ladder).
Using her skills as a professional in the fine arts, Patti painted a mystical "protection" symbol that would help prevent anything destructive from happening to the house. Since the house remains closed and mostly unused for 9 or 10 months out of the year we thought the old "camphouse" might need all the support and protection that we and the gods could give to it.
But the next morning when we went outside we saw that some bird in flight had dropped a full load of Splat-Crap! ..right down onto our great mystical protection icon.
"Hmmmm.. "thought we. "perhaps that was not the proper symbol to use afterall."
Scratching our heads and still wondering about such synchronistic events (which some in third world countries might call "coincidence"), I went back to work on the opposite side of the house while Patti decided to paint something new (and even MORE powerful!) onto the basement door.
Well perhaps our basement entrance door now sports a somewhat less than mystical and all encompassing symbol of protection, but at least we can be totally assured that no bird will ever again fire off a load of blu-goo onto our newly sided and freshly painted house.
Now that's a relief!
