Dump it or lose it

As I sit here with a wrenched back from four days of work on the pool deck I figured it was a good time to recant my extended time off which started last Thursday with Christmas day.  The longer I go without emptying my memory banks, the more detail is lost to the mists, never to be recalled again.

So Christmas Eve and Christmas day were good except for Cindy’s health, which was poor.  Unfortunately Christmas day she felt the worst.  Of course I could identify since I had been battling what I assume is the same strain of illness for nearly three weeks.  Since Cindy’s daughter and mom had already stopped by on Tuesday night Cindy and I had a very solo Christmas.  Of course mom’s absence added to the more isolating feel.  I did position her glasses overlooking the Christmas tree, as if that made a difference.

Thankfully we had the dogs who for whatever reason seem to understand and recognize that Christmas = fun for them.  Both Nicki and Sadie had big dog smiles most of the morning.

Now I’ll be the first to admit that we both went overboard on Christmas presents.  To have close to 40 presents (some were small of course) for just two people was a little crazy.  I just like getting stuff for Cindy, it’s a small token of how much I appreciate everything she does for me on a daily basis 365 days a year.  The ironic thing is although of course Cindy likes presents, it’s the last thing she really cares about.  She isn’t materialistic at all.

She was flabbergasted as I put box after box in front of her to rip apart.  For the most part I did a good job and a lot of the stuff I got had side benefits for me like cool kitchen items to assist Cindy in her fabulous food prep she does for me.  The Kindle Fire HD7 I got Cindy also was my ticket to being able to play Hearthstone on a tablet.  It won’t run well on the Galaxy Tab I got last year but seems to run pretty smoothly on the Fire.

Cindy got me way too much stuff as well.  Obviously she feels that my wardrobe is a bit dated as she hooked me up with a number of cool clothes.  She also got me some other cool little things that to be honest I haven’t gotten to dig into yet thanks to the deck project. On Christmas I got to talk to Todd, Torrin and my dad which was nice.  Those calls carry a bit more meaning now that mom is gone and I have no family in the area any longer.

During the day we worked mostly on clean up and consolidation of the huge influx of gifts into the household.  By 2 or 3PM we had most of the legwork completed.  I was feeling my seemingly unavoidable post-Christmas round of depression set in.  I can’t really explain why it happens.  I just know after all the presents are opened, the Christmas music is turned off and the clean up begins I feel down in the dumps. I think mom not being there made it a little more heavy this year.

For the past few years  I have attended the Christmas party that is held by the running club president and his wife in their beautiful home in Naples proper.  We were once again invited to go and originally planned to attend.  However Cindy was feeling pretty miserable and I just didn’t see the point of going with her being sick and me feeling 180 degrees away from the partying mood.  The dogs were happy we decided to stay home with them I’m sure.

So on Friday I had off but Cindy had to work.  My original plan was to go get all of the stuff needed to repaint the pool deck but it turned into a lot more driving than that.  One of the big things I got for Cindy for Christmas was a gift certificate to have all of the windows in her Prius tinted.  It’s something she had talked about wanting to get done from day one but didn’t get around to yet.

I called the shop I got the gift cert from on Friday, wanting to see if we could set up an appointment on Monday or Tuesday to get the work done since we were both off.  I was taken off guard when the owner said he can do it right now.  Ok, I said, I’ll get it there, even though I wasn’t quite sure how I was going to make this work since Cindy took the Prius to work.

What followed was a probably close to a couple hundred miles of driving.  I told Cindy of the open slot to get the work done.  She was excited to get it done and said she could get out of the office for a few minutes.  I arranged to meet her at the window tint place and then drop her back off at her office which was about 10 minutes away.  I had the dogs along of course so they were quite happy to ride along for however long it would take.

When we dropped the Prius off the guy said it should only take a couple hours to do the work.  So I told Cindy maybe I could run my errands and then come back and drop her off to get the car.  After dropping her off I was all over the place including a stop at Lowes to get the supplies for the pool deck repaint.

I brought some of the left over paint from when the deck was done last and asked the paint guy if they could color match it.  Well their idea of color matching was taking a dab of the old paint, drying it and then holding it up to the color card for their pool deck product, looking for a close match.  I thought this was going to be a more exact thing where they tint and test to get an exact match.  The color I wound up with was called khaki which was close but definitely lighter than what was already on the deck.  Since we were doing a complete repaint I didn’t really care.  The lighter, brighter color would look good.

I also got two cans of primer designed for the pool deck paint.  I think this is where Rhinoshield botched the job, the guy half ass primed the deck by spraying stuff on in a way that did not cover the surface completely.  I would be rolling and brushing on the primer over every square inch of the deck.

I called the tint place and heard that the Prius was done.  Unfortunately Cindy had to wait for a girl to get back from her lunch break before she could be picked up.  I wasted the additional hour by returning an item to Sam’s, some 10 miles north of Cindy’s office, and dumping 20 gallons of gas into the party van before returning to pick her up.

The Prius looked sharp with the new tint.  The good looks will be backed up with the 80% light/heat blockage the top of the line ceramic tint will provide.  The guy that owns the 1-2 man shop was real laid back and nice.  It felt good to support a small business.  He also happens to be an avid swimmer.  He said he has logged something ridiculous like 4300 miles of swimming in the Gulf of Mexico.

So I had spent much more of my day running around than I planned meaning I got home later than I wanted to.  I still needed to at least get something done for the pool deck project that was tangible.  I cleared off the deck of everything and put up the 100 feet of contractor barrier fencing around the perimeter of the pool cage to keep the chickens from kicking mulch onto it after it was cleaned.  Cindy was impressed how much I got done in the brief amount of time I had at home.

On Friday night we chilled and watched Into the Storm, a movie about super tornadoes.  The special effects alone were incredible.  They reproduced the utter destruction of the storm with incredible realism.  The story was just ok but you don’t see  movie like this for the plot.  It was a solid B+ rental for me.

So on Saturday the work on the deck ramped up since both Cindy and I were available to work on it for the next four days.  Unfortunately the dense morning fog that we have experienced every morning has not been helpful, leaving everything moist for half of the morning.  Cindy’s primary job was sweeping up the deck of loose particles with the ShopVac.  I followed behind with the pressure washer.

Since the deck was being repainted I used the pressure washer at point blank range, applying more washing power to the deck.  The additional pressure stripped a ton of the old shitty paint job off all over the place.  Maybe deck paint just isn’t made to withstand 3200 PSI? I also went around with a caulk gun and my index finger filling in the multitude of small hairline cracks that were “fixed” by Rhinoshield but reappeared only a few months later.  I am hoping using the flexible caulk will yield more long lasting results than the concrete patch material they used originally.

So unfortunately that was really all the deck work we could get done on Saturday as the surface had to be absolutely dry before moving to the next step of applying primer.

Saturday night we met up with Lily at Mercato.  Cindy had suggested that we meet up for dinner since Lily was in town visiting family.  I agreed that was a good idea until we pulled into the Mercato complex.  I had given no thought to how miserably full the place would be the Saturday night after Christmas.  We  circled for 20 minutes looking for a parking spot as we passed dozens of parking space mongers, a species I simply have no tolerance for.  By the time we parked on the top level of the parking deck I was annoyed to the max.

Luckily a few beers over dinner settled me down.  We sat at the bar of the Rusty Bucket, a place I got a gift card to for Xmas, and had nice meals while downing a few 20 once Miller Lites.  It was nice to catch up with Lily, Randall’s ex-girlfriend.  Even though their relationship hasn’t worked out we have kept in touch with Lily who is a sweetheart.  After dinner we made a beeline for home, we both have been sleep deprived from the poor sleep we seem to get when the dogs are around.  They seem far too eager to wake us up in the middle of the night.

The dogs, especially Sadie were quite unhappy with being blocked from the pool deck, one of their go to places to hang out at the house.  They camped by the sliding glass door endlessly, hoping to be able to quickly circumvent my leg blockade.

Sunday we again had to start later than we hoped due to the fog.  Once it lifted a bit we got busy spreading primer, a substance that looked and smelled like glue.  It was clear going on, making it a bit hard to tell where you did and did not cover.  Luckily as it dried it developed a white haze which made it easy for us to tell if we missed a spot.

I helped Cindy with the hand brushing of the edges of the pool cage while I let the coping to Cindy alone as she is better with precision painting.  I then grabbed the roller with a 4 foot extension pole and started rolling.  The work didn’t seem too bad at first but after awhile the movement got difficult as I tried to apply significant downward pressure with each stroke to press the primer into the nooks and crannies of the Spraykrete surface.  I systematically worked my way around the deck, finishing up the last few strokes as I stood in the great room, hanging out the sliding door.

Cindy came up with a great idea that I hadn’t thought about, touching up the rusty pool cage screws/bolts, which there are a ton of.  She used a can of white Rustoleum paint and a small brush to dramatically improve the appearance of these formerly rust encrusted bolts.  She figured if there was any time to do it, now would be the time.  She was right, I’m glad she thought of it. (and did the tedious work herself)  🙂

As if we hadn’t been doing enough this weekend, Cindy also started a side task of repairing the timing mats I bought for Green Machine Timing.  Both of the mats have rips in them.  Cindy is using backing material along with considerable hand sewing to fix and reenforce the mats, saving me potentially the $1200 it would cost to replace them.

During the down time over the weekend I shipped two very large boxes.  One was a 95 pound behemoth, containing two 5 meter Ipico mats that the club replaced years ago but were still sitting in my closet.  I sold them to help offset the expense of some new equipment the club bought for timing.  The other 60lb box was the spare tire kit I bought for Cindy’s daughter that it turned out she didn’t need.  I was glad that the place I bought it from agreed to let me return it.

So yesterday we got to the meat of the project, the painting itself.  Having just experienced a day of applying primer our game plan was much the same.  We did the edges, coping and then it was floor rolling time.  Unlike the primer that required a minimum of 8 hours dry time the pool deck paint was ready for a second coat after a couple of hours.  After applying the first coat we ran out to Lowes for a third gallon of paint as I suspected we would not have enough, my suspicion was correct.

By the time I was done rolling the second coat the sun was going down and my body was breaking down.  My back was killing me from the thousands of hunched over rolling strokes.  By the time I finished up I was physically and mentally done with the project, too bad we weren’t actually done in the true sense of the word.

Actually Monday night instead of ending, the project actually expanded. I bought two black PolyWood lounge chairs from Amazon to replace the cheap, shitty, rusty water expelling lounge chairs that have been on the deck for several years.

The purchase of two black chairs inspired some further renovations where Cindy suggested we repaint the brown metal patio furniture to match.  The furniture had some rust on it too so a repaint would make sense and changing the color would give things a fresh new look.  So now our Tuesday, which we originally hoped would be nothing but relaxation was instead loaded up with more to do’s.

When I awoke this morning I paid the price for the endless rolling.  It felt like I had a spear shoved in my back right below my right shoulder blade.  If I twisted the wrong way it brought stop you dead in your tracks, stabbing pain.  I was obviously going to be limited in my functionality.  We headed to Lowes once again, probably the 6th time in as many days I had visited a home improvement super store.  We got spray paint for the metal furniture, stain for the wood stuff along with a few other small items.

I did a few little things but the painting has been exclusively done by Cindy today.  She has been out there for a couple hours at least plugging along.  When all of this labor is done I am sure we will look back on it favorably and with pride, however at this moment, the only description that keeps coming to mind for the last four days has been, “pain in the ass”.

Saw The Giver last night, B+.