One of the crew, Dave (we are changing the names to protect the guilty again), is an enthusiastic young man, with no real experience in construction. He works hard though and wants to learn. If we could only get him to show up on time and everyday consistently we’d be happier. Gary describes him as a Labrador Retriever puppy, enthusiastic, eager to please but not always aware of the environment around him.
Case in point. With the siding package we received 6 cans (one litre) of blue paint and two cans (litre) of white trim plate. Small cans, they are for painting the cut surfaces of the siding and trim and touch up (for dings, nail heads etc.). It is an incredible paint and dries to the touch in minutes. It is a powerful product (one of the ingredients is ether) and I’d like to tell you what the precaution label said, but I’ve used it in poorly ventilated enclosed spaces and can no longer access that part of my brain’s memory. These 8 cans were probably sufficient for our needs but we were not going to end up with a whole lot extra.
So when one is siding each and everytime you cut a board you must paint the cut surface to protect it against water damage, and maintain the warranty. Before we finished insulating the house and putting in temporary heat we insulated the mechanical room and had a space heater in it. When we were siding we cut a hole in the insulation for this room, stuck the ends of the siding boards through it and painted them like that.
The nails for the siding are painted the same colours as the siding and the trim, and you put a little plastic cap on the hammer to keep from chipping the paint off the nails when you drive them. This worked okay for the blue nails, but the white trim nails were more substaintial and we were destroying the hammer caps trying to drive them, especially in the cold. So we needed to switch to driving them without the caps on, meaning that each nail in the trim would eventually need to be painted once the weather warmed up.
And that is what our Labrador puppy was doing, up on the scaffold, painting nail heads in trim and facia. Come quitting time he was gathering up tools etc to put away. Of course, not wanting to make many trips up and down the scaffold he gathered up some tools and the can of paint in his arms and headed down. A short time later he was up again to see Gary. “Gary I spilled the paint.” I guess it would have been a better idea to put the lid on tight if you were going to carry a can of paint in an arm full of tools down three or four sections of scaffold. Most of the nearly full can emptied on him.
So now we don’t have enough white trim paint to finish, probably. As it is a dangerous good, shipping a can airfreight will probably cost us in the neigbourhood of $100, not to mention the cost of the paint itself. Oh well, live and learn I guess. Or not. A few days later, Gary again heard those fateful words. “Gary I spilled the paint.”. This time it was a can of blue siding paint. Apparently “it just spilled when I put it down”. At least that particular part of our living rooms subfloor will have extra moisture protection.