A brighter white

This week has been a continuation of appointments and working on the house. After my second dental appointment of the week (picking up free whitening gel for being a new patient), I stopped by the rental place.

The rental shop is a total guy haven. Any tool you can possibly need is there to pick up. You try to imagine a valid need for a backhoe, if only to make the neighbors jealous. I wasn't picking up anything really manly today, just a power washer.

This weekend's project is to finish painting the house. We put five coats of red paint on the house last year, but the white trim is only white primer so far. Also, after a year of weather, the vertical siding has expanded and contracted, opening up cracks revealing the old house color. Stripes was not the look I was going for.

So I needed the power washer to spray off a years worth of grime before finishing up the paint job. The minimum rental period was four hours, so I ended up spraying off the patio and sidewalks to get my money's worth. They didn't seem all that dingy when I started, but the power washer really brightened them up.

After returning the power washer, I ended up spending 45 minutes at Home Depot waiting for them to mix up the particular shade of white I had picked out from the 40 options. 4o shades of white! It seemed ridiculous looking at the wall of white cards, but when you pull them out and look at them side by side, there are differences. I ended up going with "Dove White". According to the cards, doves are more purely white than swans, in case you were wondering.

Then I spent a few hours taping up the house so I can start painting first thing tomorrow. Unfortunately I ran out of daylight before I could finish. As I was working on the front of the house, one of my neighbors shouted from across the street, "Hey didn't you paint your house last year?" Smart ass. Yes, it is one more unfinished project I'm trying to wrap up, thank you.

I should have grabbed a few of those paint sample cards so I could compare them to my teeth whitening progress.