Thursday

 

Above, you can see before we hand scrubbed the upper wall and scraped the lower wall.

We started scrubbing and pressure washing the wall and trim.

The algae came off easily. Unlike the south wall, the paint on the north wall is all intact and adhering to the wall. The algae is on top of the paint.

John is the only one who could reach the really tall parts.

Looks so much better. It's almost ready for a little primer and painting.

This is how the lower wall looked before scrapping and a second pressure wash. Looks can be deceiving because there was a lot of loose paint, especially near ground level.

This is how the lower wall looked after scrapping and pressure washing the second time. I dug some concrete blocks out of the bed and pulled up plants that were too close to the house.

A decent amount of paint came off with the pressure wash, more than I scraped. You could see the mold and algae on top of the paint. Instead of cleaning it, it was easier to remove the paint since it was loose already.

Scraping gets the loose paint started. We need to repair some loose stucco at the end of the window ledge.

Some places the paint held firm better than others.

Where there were plants, the paint was more likely to come loose.

Or under the hose hanger, where it is often wet. I took the hanger down temporarily. 

I trimmed some plumeria branches to keep them away from the house.

It's supposed to rain around midnight tomorrow, so we probably won't have time to prime. The wall needs 24 hours to dry after pressure washing.

We'll probably just scrape and repair one crack in the plaster by a window. I’d also like to remove one or two of these boxes from the side of the house. One of them is a telephone box and one is a cable box, neither of which is in use. In fact, the cable cord is cut and wrapped inside the box.

We will be keeping on eye on the weather forecast to see what we can get accomplished before the rain moves in. Primer can be exposed to light rain 4 hours after painting, but a heavier rain requires 24 hours. So if the rain is light, we could prime after 4 p.m. If it's going to be heavy, we'll have to wait. This is the first time since we began painting November 7th that it has rained.