painting the swing

Or: "I'm finally doing something productive!"

We have an outdoor swing set on our front lawn, given to us as a gift from my aunt several years ago. It's large enough to seat four small-sized adults (or six children, whichever group came running to it first). It came in dull maroon, which was ghastly but it was a gift so we didn't mind. The last time I painted it with my cousin was three years ago, in metallic silver, because it was beginning to rust and the paint was peeling off. Now it was beginning to rust again.

In part one of our home improvement project, we decided it was time to re-paint it. This time, in white and gold to match the gates. And this time with my sisters. So we bought the paint, the paintbrushes, the thinner and a few chocolate bars (mostly for my little sister) and set out to do what we set out to do. Here's a chronicle of sorts.

day one
Seemed like a nice day to start -- a cloudless, sunny day. We laid out the paraphernalia next to the swing, and decided to paint the ornate parts in gold and everything else in white. I tilted the swing to one side while my sisters inserted newspapers underneath to prevent paint dripping on the carpet grass (suitable for golf, if only the lawn was big enough to accomodate). We did the same on each side, and I told them I was already tired from the heavy lifting and needed a break. No mercy from them, so we proceeded to stir the paint a little to homogenize the color, and we started dipping the paintbrushes... but we hadn't bought gloves! We applied the first coat of white paint, covering almost half of the swing in an hour but covered almost all our hands as well. I started sweating within the first ten minutes because it was so hot in the sun. We thought it was a job well done for a day's work.

day two
My sister found several pairs of old ice-skating gloves in the store room, so we're saved! The hardest part was painting the slats; so many hard to reach places. We went around, under, over, spilling paint all over our clothes in the process. Whew! Not as easy as I thought it was gonna be. And there was still so much to be done. And it was still hot as hell. We thought it'd be better to do it at night the next day. Then it started to rain! All the hard work down the drain.

day three
We resumed the paint job at half past midnight. A lot cooler now, but the humidity was just the same -- I was soaked not long after. Almost done with the white parts, so one of my sisters started with the gold paint. It was starting to look real nice! Had an argument with the little sis (as usual), and she thought white would look good on my shorts. Really funny stuff.

day four
Too lazy. I let my sisters do it instead. Maybe tomorrow.

day five
Yay! It's looking spiffy! The second coat of paint was already dry, so I just touched it up a little. The gold areas were difficult, because now I had to be careful not to paint over the white parts. But there were so many nooks and crannies where they met, I just couldn't resist! I kept a mental note to touch those up when I'm done, but then the inevitable happened. We ran out of gold paint. And it started to rain again. Not having much else to do, we packed it up and considered it done.

So yeah, it's not finished. If this was a murder case, it would be classified under 'unsolved' in the filing cabinet of an FBI agent. If it was a patent awaiting the stamp of approval, it would still be pending. Maybe some other day.

PLAYLIST

California -- Phantom Planet

I'm Looking Through You -- The Beatles

Summer Romance -- Incubus

1985 -- Bowling For Soup

I'm Only Sleeping -- The Vines