Life of Brian

There were only a few Post Offices left that were close enough for a half day trip and we polished them off this morning. The town of Irmo, a little northwest of Columbia, had three. There was the Post Office in the mysterious town called State Park. A passed over one in downtown Columbia (pictured) and a CPU just across the Broad River in the town of Cayce.

We got back into town a little after 11:00AM so we decided to get lunch at Subway before heading home. Donna had a Tuna Salad Salad and I had a 6″ BMT. We split a bag of Sun Chips and a Medium Coke. Well, actually, I ate nearly all of the Sun Chips.

The rest of the day was passed enjoying the fruits of Willis Havilland Carrier’s “Apparatus for Treating Air” (U.S. Pat. #808897).

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.