The Verdict on the Fence

 

Well, it was a hard-fought project. Took me eight weeks, mostly working a few hours on the weekend in the morning before it got too hot, and I did miss two weekends due to rain. All in all, I tallied 39 hours of work, done mostly while listening to podcasts and slathered up in sun block.

 

Here are the before pics:

 

And the after pics:

 

I learned from my neighbor that he paid two guys $1,500 three years ago to paint his fence. Since my corner lot is a somewhat bigger than his, I guesstimated the current cost to me to have it professionally painted would have been around $2,000. This on top of buying the three drums of stain as well as the rollers, paintbrushes, and trays used.

 

So my 39 hours of labor saved me $2,000. If I was one of those pair of workers mentioned above, I’d have earned $25.64 an hour for the job. Not bad but not great, but better to have paid myself in my imagination than to write a check to some painting company in real life.

 

Verdict: Glad I did it, but I ain’t doing it again. Before we sell the house in a couple of years I’ll touch up the faded areas, but I’ll be doing that in the winter when it actually gets cool around here.

 

N.B. I listened to a lot of true crime podcasts while painting, as well as an hourlong interview with a JFK assassination author, an hour on why history is false (it didn’t convince me) and a whole bunch of movie reviews.

N.B. 2. My favorite “treat” meal after a three-hour painting session was a ham-and-swiss hero with lettuce, tomato, mayo, washed down with an ice tea, bought from a new deli that just opened two miles from my house. Ham-and-Swiss on a roll with lettuce, tomato, and mayo is just about the perfect lunch sandwich ever created.

N.B. 3. My “reward” for the job was an “Atlas of the Civil War” magazine. I may have jumped the gun as I bought it before I finished my work, and now my interest has moved on, so it is now gathering dust on the shelf. Oh well. The maps are pretty.