New Paint, New Shrubs

For six months I have been meaning to post a story and photos about painting my house with my son Luke and rebuilding my lanai with my friend Edgar and never seemed to get around to it. So here it finally is.

The facia on a house is the lumber extending from the bottom of the roof line to below the beams supporting the roof. The facia on my house had been badly damaged by termites and had to be replaced. During spring break 2012 Luke and I went at the heavy 2x8x16' boards with sledge hammers to bang them off of the house. It's really nice finally having a son who can swing a sledge and haul forty pound piece of lumber over his shoulder to the roof. We tore all the bug eating boards off and put them on the curb. And then went about hauling, priming and painting the new larger 2x12x16' lumber now needed.

We then sprayed the whole house a new color, gone was the ten year old Waimea green replaced by a log cabin brown that Luke chose. In fact he ended up doing most of the spraying of the paint. I showed him how to do it and he took to it well. A new skill to add to the at present rather slim resume. I hired him and his friend Josh to not only play "Step and Fetch It"but to paint the house and trim as well.

They grumbled and groused about the harsh conditions and slave driver daily schedule, but in the end they did a great job. Since there were some 300' of 2x12x16 heavy facia boards to attach to the house, half of it twenty feet above the ground, I had to call in some special forces in the name of my friend Edgar. He brought with him his special scaffolding that was required to reach the high spots on the house he and I had to haul the heavy lumber up to and nail in place.

It was quite an arduous couple of days for a near old goat like me to spend in the hot sun humping and hammering heavy lumber high above the ground. I would rather have been shooting it with a camera as some young buck did the heavy and hot lifting. But that was not the case and Edgar and I had to do it.

Here is what the front of the house looked like after Luke and I sledged the facia off and whacked all the shrubs in anticipation of the paint spraying to come the next day.

And here is the same house front after the new paint job and a lava rock garden Luke and I put in from lava rocks picked from the 1899 flow off of Kaupulehu and bromeliads and orchids given to me by my friend Timbo.

Speaking of my good friend Timbo, six months before the paint job I mentioned to him if he ever ran across an Ohia  log I could replace a termite eaten 4x4 post on my lanai with please let me know. Two weeks later he called to tell me he had a buddy with a bunch of Ohia logs on a property in South Kona he had to get rid of and did he want any of them!

Well, we drove down there that weekend and I picked four I thought would work well on my lanai. They were rough hewn posts, but the end s were painted to keep out bugs and they had been stored under cover so no water damage was done. The largest two were twelve feet long, 14 inches in diameter and must have weighed 300 pounds each as they are such hard woods. We humped them into Timbo's truck, drove 'em home and dragged them to the gazebo in my yard where I would prep them for there place on the lanai.

The logs were raw and hard. The Ohia tree is famous for it's strong hard and very straight trunks. The roof of Mokuaikaua Church, the first christian church built in Hawaii here in Kona is held up by Ohia tree trunks cut in1840. The four trunks I chose to hold up my lanai needed many, many hours of grinding, sanding and treating with anti termite juice and Danish cherry wood oil before they were ready to be cut and carried on to their place.

I paid Luke to work on the weekends dragging a grinder and orbital sander back and forth over each log, but it was up to me to finish them off nicely and coat them with Danish oil in preparation to their future life overlooking the wide Pacific Ocean beyond the lanai the would now uphold.

Edgar once again came to my rescue and helped me measure, cut, haul and secure the heavy logs in place of the old rotten 4x4's that have been keeping the roof overhead for the past 25 years.

Finally after very much sweat and strain the house is painted, the lava rock garden is in place, the rough hewn Ohia log posts are smoothed, oiled and put in place and the lanai looks wonderful.

Mahalo to Luke and Josh and especially Edgar without whose help I could not have accomplished this job. I hope you'll drop by and enjoy a sunset with me one day on my fine lanai!

Brian