Painting

Painting

Alex stood on back porch. It had to be painted, but it took two weeks to paint the front porch and this was bigger. He dreaded it. Not a happy painter, he’d always been able to talk Sandy into it. But Sandy was pregnant and every time she smelled the paint, she got sick.

Well, he’d do it, but there had to be an easier way. He began to drum his fingers on the rail, thinking. The spindles of course were the worst. Those lovely spindles that had rounds and flats and looked so pretty… there were so many of them! Plus, you had to paint them one at a time, and you had to paint both sides. Dred, dred. And, off this porch there was a massive flower garden, so every step was going to be hard, not like the bushes out front.

Suddenly he got an idea. If he could mask off the flower garden, he could spray paint the spindles all at once! Then he could do the other sides easily from the garden side, not a lot of moving, and he had to paint the porch floor anyway, so a little extra paint on the floor boards couldn’t hurt. He put it in progress; it worked! He used a plastic sheeting on the garden saving the flowers and, once dry, carefully moved through the garden spraying the other side, done!!

The rest of the porch went fast! Done in one day! Sandy was amazed! That afternoon he and Sandy were sitting on the front porch enjoying the fact that the painting was done when their cat, who had been missing all day, came up to demand food. Their black cat, who when he turned around, now had white stripes painted all along his body.