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My house has needed painting for two or three years, but the addition had to come first so, in 2006, the maintenance for the year was painting.

Here is A.J. Stephens, who will be a college freshman, working on the kitchen window from a ladder.

This is comparatively a really easy job.  Tim is using a heater of some sort to soften the paint before scraping the windows on the front of the house.

The same place as the right, but from the door of the carriage house which is not quite ground level.

Success at last!  On July 19, the ground was firm enough to allow the lift to move up the hill toward the back of the house.

This is as high as you can get.  A.J. is scraping the gable at the back of the house above the small deck outside the  back bedroom.

This shows the finished first coat of the paint job on the left, the scraped surface in the center and the primer at the right.

This is the view from the ground as Brent works on the south-facing dormer from the bucket of the lift.  That is really up there.

This is how they got to the front of the house.  This lift is larger, with a wider wheel base so it can reach higher than the one they drove into the back yard.  This one could not possibly have gone through the narrow opening to the back yard               

                                                                             This is a closer view of the front gable of the house.  That's Brent and Chris working.

A J. seems to have great climbing skills.  He is painting the gable by the south chimney.  The roofline at the left is the neighbors' house.

At right are the intrepid painters.  Brent Coffey is second from the right and from left the crew are A.J. Stevens, Chris Snyder and Tim Bright.  They posed for this picture on Aug. 4, the last day for the whole crew.  There will be some finishing up on the following Monday for Brent while the rest are on to the next job.

This is their truck.  

Only about half of the exterior is a painted surface, the rest brick, but it is so high, and the roof is mission tile which is probably not too breakable, but it is held on with fasteners which are 100 years old so the painters can't walk on or hang from the tile.

Here is Brent's solution to the problem of getting to the top without touching the tile roof.

He has rented a lift to get himself up to the top of the house.  He's signing the paperwork in the street at the back of the house.  He has parked the lift in the space in which I am standing to take the picture.  The only problem is that even though the house is large, the yard is small.  It also has very difficult features to negotiate..  Those stones in the lower right corner are really in the neighbor's yard.  There also was a board fence there which has suffered some damage because this seemed to be the only way to get to the back yard, and it is a fairly steep incline.  With the wet soil, it was slippery going.

Brent had used the lift in the alley beside the house, and of course scaffolding and ladders, but he had the lift for 4 working days before he had enough dry weather that he could get it into position in the back yard.

This is from the alley.  Brent controls the lift from the platform, which is neat to watch.  It is really a one-man job if you want it to be.

This is the back of the house above the little deck that was on the old part of the house.  They put scaffolding up, and I guess the lift was the easiest way to get to the top.  They are pressure washing the main parts of the house and heating and scraping the windows etc.

This is how Brent looks from the inside the third floor while he's using the pressure washer.

The painters are power washing and scraping the front porch.

This the same work seen from the back yard.  As I said, really up there.

When the houses are close, you count on the neighbors being the nice people that they are and ask to put a ladder from the roof of one of their porches to the dormer on the south side.

This is looking from the neighbors' back yard.  At left is the roof of the porch with the ladder to the dormer.  They usually worked with one person, in this case Chris, holding things together from the dormer window, and one on the ladder.

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