Month: June 2007

We had a massive deck and screened porch built on the back of our house in July of 2000. It runs nearly the whole length of the house with half being screened porch and half deck. Of the two, the porch gets the most use because it is covered and has ceiling fans making it a 3 seasons room. The only time we don’t use it is during our two month winter. The deck is more of a 2 half seasons place, early spring and late fall. We went the first 5 years without doing anything to the deck, but then it really needed some help. Pressure washing and Thompson Water Sealing held up for a couple more bring us to this year.

Hopefully this will hold us for the next couple of years. The sticker on the outside of the watersealer proudly announces that it is good for three years. We’ll see. After finishing the deck around noon we promptly went inside and spent the rest of the day inside enjoying the air conditioning. We did go back out at 9:00 PM (it was still 90º) to get an ice cream and go grocery shopping.

Finished pressure washing the deck yesterday. Then last night we headed over to Home Depot for some waterproofer/sealer. Two years ago we used clear Thompson’s and were pleased, but this time we thought we might get something with a little color. We only had a couple choices besides clear, Sheer Honey Gold or Sheer Rustic Red.

Looking at the color on the container, the Honey didn’t look like much of a change from clear. Didn’t really want to go with the Red because the house is brick and we wanted to keep a little contrast between wall and deck, but the color on the jug didn’t look too red, so we bought a couple gallons. I think this colored stuff is slightly thicker than the clear that we used 2 years before. I filled up the cheap pump sprayer I used had before and started to apply the stuff. Ick. It either comes out too fast or if I dial the nozzle back it comes out too sparsely. And boy is it red. When I did the first couple of pieces of the outside railing I called in Donna for a second opinion. We both agreed it was darker than we anticipated, but thought it looked pretty good. I ditched the sprayer and we each grabbed one of the two foam brushes we had left over from another painting job and started at it.

After about 30 minutes Donna bailed on me, the mosquitoes were awful thick and were eating her alive. I was fine by that anyway because I had told her I was happy to do the whole job myself. I stuck it out for another half hour or so until the last of the two foam brushes crumbled to uselessness.

We bought some more foam brushes on tonight’s shopping trip, so I’m all set to tackle more staining/painting/water proofing of the railings and balusters on Saturday. I’ve got a nice big old roller for the floor just standing by until I’m finished with detail work.

After this weekend’s big push we are now more than a third of the way to the goal of taking a picture of every Post Office in the state of South Carolina. Today we did a dozen on the way home from Greenville. This is a different angle than I used in the gallery of my favorite Post Office for today, Cross Hill.

For breakfast I had a bowl of raisin ban, a cinnamon bun, half a banana and a small OJ. Donna had half an order of biscuits and gravy, half a banana and a bagel with cream cheese, water to wash it all down.

Today’s photo total was pretty good, we have had 2 days with 13, so it would have ranked as the second most productive day if it hadn’t been for Saturday. On Saturday we did 7 POs on the way to Greenville. Took a break at the hotel for a while and then did 4 on the way to the ballgame we didn’t stay for, doing four more before calling it a night. For a total of fifteen pictures on Saturday. Speaking of night, two of those photos were shot in the dusk and the last two were taken in the dark. They didn’t come out half bad, so we may be doing more low light images.

Lunch today was at a Taco Bell in Greenwood. Two chicken taco supremes for Donna and I had 3 soft beef tacos. A medium Sierra Mist fountain drink was shared between the two of us.

156 Post Offices down with 304 to go. This weekend’s photos are up in the Gallery or on the Flickr page. No captioning yet and the titles need fixing. No geotags on the Flicker images yet either, so they don’t show up on the map. Go peek if you just need to see how many ways I can put a Miata in a Post Ofice parking lot, but if you want a story to go with the image, come back later this week.