Friday, October 31, 2008

Obama, Part II

I had a miserable night. Who knew spray painting was so physically demanding? Holding the spray can and pressing the nozzle down as hard as a could for nearly three hours wreaked havoc on my hand and forearm. My thumb and index finger tips are still numb.

Turns out this is mostly due to bad supplies. I bought spray paint that cost a buck a can. As a result, flow was uneven and small and there wasn't much in each can. Today I went back to the store and got better paint plus a couple of these things you fit over the top of a can so you can have more of a two-finger trigger to spray. Made a huge difference. Plus, the new paint had a much bigger fanned out spray area. Tonight I am mostly complaining about how sore my hamstrings and butt are from leaning over for so long.














Today I got started around 3:30 and wrapped up around 5:30. I had Owen with me, and he helped a little but mostly I wanted to keep him away from the fumes. Turns out that cheap spray paint also seems to smell worse and fly up into the air more. I had hardly any trouble breathing at all with the Krylon!

So, some blue first. I bought new blue since I thought what I had was too dark. Not enough, though, so I ended up finishing with the cheap blue. It looked fine in the end.














So all done with the red and blue, I then re-applied some white so it would look better. And that's that! I did hang a big light in the tree pointing down on the whole thing so you can see it in the dark. I need to mess with that a little more so it shows more, but otherwise I am done!





Summary stats: about 6 hours of time, 7 cans of white (6 cheap, 1 good), 4 cans of blue (2 cheap, 2 good), 7 cans of red (4 cheap, 3 good)
p.s. We did Trick-or-Treating in another neighborhood tonight with friends. I made sure we left a huge bag of candy out for people to take. When we got home, no candy left, but also no eggs or other vandalism! This afternoon probably 8 people honked or waved or yelled positive stuff out their car windows while I was working in it. Excellent!

4 comments:

Jennifer Pierson said...

honk honk wave wave

Kristina said...

AWESOME!

Steven said...

So nice. If Pennsylvania goes blue, the nation has you to thank!

Kimberley said...

WOOOOO HOOOOOO!!!!!!!
You got the mojo working with the lawn painting!

Big happy kisses from deep inside one of the remaining red states.