Except for a few minor clean-up details like pouring a concrete slab for the propane tank and another slab in front of the garage, the outside of the house is basically done.

Our part of the build technically started last Friday.  But Friday was basically a lost day.  All we accomplished was to go to Home Depot (a 30 mile drive one way) and get some of the painting supplies, primer and caulk.

So Friday we got supplies, loaded up in the War Wagon with all of the tools and equipment that we will need immediately and drove it to the house.  We also started our plan for our work for the next few days.

We also included all of the camping equipment that we will need once the fence gets done, so we can start spending nights at the house.  (We need the fence done so the dogs do not wander off.)

We spent the first couple days caulking every single inside corner and every window.  We also got almost everything masked off well (hopefully).

I also broke down and bought a Graco paint sprayer.

What a difference a proper sprayer makes!  When we lived in Minnesota I had one of those stupid Wagner Power Sprayers.  I bought it specifically to spray our brick fireplace in our livingroom.  It was awful!  We had to constantly come along behind it and brush out the drips.  This Graco sprayer is still not a professional model, but works very well.  Once we had everything taped off, I was able to spray each of the bedrooms in less than an hour each, and that is with no experience with it and using a ladder rather than a scaffold.

Of course, using a sprayer the primer goes EVERYWHERE!  So I had to don protective gear to cover my face.

Here is my Jihadi-Suit version 1.0:

That did not work out well AT ALL!!!

The paper mask fills up with primer in a very short time.  When it does, my breath immediately starts fogging glasses.  But worse than that, I started sucking primer down the mask and completely covered my face!  My entire face that was not covered with the Jihadi hat was completely white.  And primer does not wash off with soap and water.  It is designed to stick to things and it serves its purpose well.

I found Dawn dish washing soap works pretty well with it, but you really have to scrub.  My face was already a little sunburned and scrubbing on it for an hour with dish soap left me in more than a bit of pain.

Jihadi-Suit version 2.0 worked much better:

Although, it still did not work great with my glasses.  It pushed them up so the bifocal line was right in my work area.  If I took my glasses off it worked great.  The problem was, then I could not see.  So I went along spraying 5 or 6 feet, then taking the goggles off and putting my glasses on to see what I missed.  But it still worked far better than a roller and I call it “painting by brail”.

Today, I got most of the living room, dining room and kitchen primed, but I will save those pictures for next week.

Smiley also got about half the fence up.

Smiley does great work as the fences are absolutely stick straight and tight as a guitar string.  The problem is getting him to actually show up and do his great work.  I cannot get mad at him because he is just too nice of a guy.  But it will be really nice to have the fence done so we can bring the dogs to the house when we come to work.  The problem is, the dogs can only go about 7 hours without going outside.  Since it is almost an hour each way to get from the rental house to the build site, Tina can only put in about 5 hours of work per day.

Last but not least, we met some of the neighbors.

It is good because I like most cows more than I like most people.