Close but no cigar

Repainting a garage sounded easy at first. Four weeks of vacation was plenty of time. On paper, it would have worked. Never has time evaporated more quickly for me. I strongly disagree with victim mentality, but in this case the primary reason for the missed deadline can be blamed primarily on external factors: Stomach sickness in sunny weather and Constant rain while healthy.

I think I might have instigated a personal DDOS attack on the Swedish weather services SMHI. That´s how often I checked the report when desperately looking for an opportunity to get to work on the garage. After a couple of failed attempts, we got a little bit braver when we noticed the rain did not hit the wall from the side, but instead was protected by the roof extension. In frustration and fear of a missed deadline we decided to take our chances and paint anyway. That time it went just fine, and the wall turned out nice. The second time our chances looked even better when the report stated no rain in the next 24 hours. I got to work immediately on the rear side of the building. I was listening to the latest album by Lorna Shore while working, and one of their songs begins with the sound of heavy rain. I was thus very surprised when I realized that the sound was not coming from the Bluetooth speaker. It was real rain and the sky had just opened itself with a strong wind towards the freshly painted wall, like the icing on the cake. I could only look on in despair as the weather Gods transformed my beautiful red wall into a Zebra-looking contraption.

Several days have passed with ongoing intermittent rain. The report had even delivered yellow warnings for heavy rain today. I expected the worst but got a pleasant surprise when the report changed once again. What should have been a storm turned out to become the best day of the summer of 2023. Fortunately, the first week of work after the vacation is usually calmer and it takes off for real next week. So, I seized the occasion and pulled on my painting suit, climbed the scaffolding and got to work.

Previous experience taught me to never cheap out on paintbrushes. In this case, I think you get more than what the price increase reflects in comparison to cheap paintbrushes. But even the high-quality brushes have a limited lifespan. The degradation in performance is too slow to be apparent. It is analogous to the decision of when to replace your razor. If you use it too many times, you will inevitably cut yourself. But a razor can be used several times, I just don´t know exactly how many. And it is the same with paintbrushes. An experienced painter will probably know precisely when he passes the point of diminishing returns and grabs a new brush. Whereas a novice like me will keep on scrubbing for way too long. And tonight, it is obvious even to a novice like yours truly, that the point of diminishing returns has been passed already. Painting with worn brushes increases the time it takes. And that´s why tonight´s session ended on a minor chord.

I only had eight slats left to paint when I was forced to call it a day. I came so close to finishing the whole building but now there is rain on the horizon once again. Oh well… As I usually say; It is physically impossible to fail at anything as long as you keep moving forward incrementally.