Blood on the tiles

Blood on the tiles, rather a dramatic heading but it takes ages to come up with catchy titles for these things. Its true too, there was blood on the tiles but probably not quite what you might be thinking.

My friend Mat has been painting this week. He was under instructions to paint the chalet. One coat of preservative and at least one coat of varnish all over. All over means all over, every bit of wood on the exterior needs covering, the walls the balconies under the eves of the roof, everything. The chalet is not an easy thing to paint and Mat knew what he was getting into and he said he could do it in a week. This sounded reasonable so away he went. I meant to be there last weekend to help him out at the start but something came up at home and I could only get there this weekend.

Text messages through the week told me how he was getting on and it seemed OK although it was raining a lot.

We turned up at about 9 at night on Friday, just after it was getting dark. It was raining and as we arrived in the gloom I thought the chalet looked a different colour...

That night Mat explained that he had not been able to paint the whole chalet but had done most of it. Most of it included nearly all the preservative and about 70% of the varnish. He then went on to explain how the varnish was weird and might not be varnish after all...

The varnish, it seems, is totally colourless and it dries quite quickly, its really hard to see what you have done and what you need to do.

So the next morning we are out and about on an inspection of his work. It was raining, which Mat told me was not unusual for this week, in fact it had been raining all week and this was one reason why he had not quite finished yet. Well he is right, it is real difficult to see what he has done but slowly you get accustomed to what you are looking for and yes it has been varnished, well most of it, just the hard bits are left. The problem is that the varnish is clear and water based. You need two coats to see it. Most of the other chalets around the place are brown or even orange from using varnish with a touch of stain in it and I imagine its a darn sight easier to see what you have done if the wood actually changes colour when its painted. Well this stuff is clear and the wood is the same colour as it was. Its great, it really looks nice. Just to make sure I gave the front door and the panels around it another coat


Maybe you can see, the wood is a bit shiny, but still the same wood colour.

Although you do feel a bit like the little boy in the Emperor's new clothes. Has it really been varnished? Am I just imagining this? No there really was varnish on the wood. It shiny, you can just see where Mat stopped. I haven't just wasted all that time and money! I haven't. I will believe, I will, I will.


Anyway, the bits I really wanted to do were the bits of timber that the sun and rain had already started to effect. That is the balcony above the garage, the barge boards (thats the timber planks on the edge of the roof) at the garage end and the other balcony. So we spent Saturday varnishing balconies and anywhere else I could reach. Meanwhile Mat regaled me with stories of how hard it was getting up to under the roof and how many times he had to move the ladder and how many times he had nearly fallen off and how it had been raining all week. Any way By Saturday the balconies where done and all the windows and most of the easy places had had two coats of varnish.

On Sunday I decided we had to attempt something more interesting and when the morning dawned not quite bright and sunny but not raining. So the barge board beckoned. Probably easiest to get at from the roof and although not recommended in the wet, in the dry it should be fine. So I opened the varnish and in doing so sliced my thumb open (you can see where this is leading...) Up the ladder and on to the roof. Easing my way over the roof right to the edge I have to lean out to paint the barge boards.

Its not easy and every now and again you get this feeling that your leaning out too far.

Well as I worked my way up the roof I left a trail of blood from my thumb. Looking down I think "Blood on the tiles" great blog title! - How sad is that? thinking about a blog while sitting on your roof in the sunshine!




What you cant see in this photo is Mat:

Just who is paying who ?










Well, I now have a partially varnished chalet, which on the whole is better than an totally unvarnished chalet so I am happy. The colour is great, I love the natural colour of the wood and I am really glad it will stay that way. For how long and how it will age remains to be seen but for now its great.

Saturday morning was spent at the bank seeing my new Bank manager, she was very helpful and is probably going to lend me the huge amount of money I need to get this place rentable!