Brazilian Peppers and Paint

This weekend we divided and conquered. Oceana worked on paint prep in the front bedroom while I tried to tame the Brazilian Pepper trees. Saturday afternoon I loaded up another large stack of lumber from my lumber pile at the house as well as the new-to-us canoe shown in last weeks post. We arrived Saturday evening and got the lumber stack unloaded and settled in for a quiet evening.

We slept in!

Sunday morning we slept in. Yes, you read that right. Now I guess everything’s relative as we were still up at 6am. We’ve had the largest mango harvest to date and this last week was the peak of the harvest. We were collecting a wheelbarrow full of mangos a day. I call it mango madness. To preserve as many mangos as possible, we can them. We make jam, salsa, and can them in syrup. We’ve canned over 37 cases of jars so far! Why not just freeze them? We have been. Our freezers are full! Anyways, the canning process has been keeping us up real late every night this week so it was a treat to go to bed early and then to sleep in.

Paint Prep

Sunday Oceana began working on paint prep for the trim in the front bedroom. Last weekend we got it installed, the nail holes filled, and a coat of primer brushed on the raw wood. Today Oceana sanded any rough areas, caulked all of the joints, puttied any missing nail holes, and then masked off the room for primer and paint. Since we were going to spray, she also masked off all of the windows and the sliding doors.

One big dump trailer

During the week this week our neighbor Tom noticed that I had done some cutting (thanks to Bud letting me use his pole saw) and offered to bring up the dump trailer to haul off the cuttings. I accepted and he dropped off the trailer on Saturday. This trailer is massive! That’s good because the Brazilian pepper trees are thick! They’ve been allowed to get overgrown for way too many years. Once again Bud brought up his pole saws for me to use.

Cut. Drag. Sweat. Repeat.

I got all of last weeks cuttings loaded up and then kept on cutting. And dragging. And cutting. And dragging. I cut until the trailer was full and then I started a pile of cuttings next to the trailer. I cut my way back to the corner of the garage and just over the property line. I’ll probably keep cutting across the property line until I reach the mother tree. Then her and I will battle it out. I took a break from the joy of cutting and dragging in the Florida sun to make a run to Sherwin Williams before they closed. We picked up some paint and primer and then got back at it.

I finally got a shower

I finished the cutting work by weedeating the tall grass and blowing off the driveway….in a torrential downpour. It rained hard. Oh well, I was already soaked with sweat. I probably smelled better after the rain shower! Anyways, I finished just in time for Oceana to be ready for primer in the bedroom. I got out the sprayer and got set up. We sprayed everything – the drywall, trim, and doors. Oceana went behind me as I sprayed and back rolled the walls. This adds a little bit of texture from the roller and makes sure the paint coat is even. Enough for the night. We sat down and had a bowl of famous split pea soup made by Bud. Thanks Bud! It was delicious.

More spraying

Monday morning we prepped the sprayer and sprayed a coat of paint onto the walls, trim, and doors. Once again, Oceana back rolled after I sprayed. Since we did a real thick coat of primer and since we’re painting everything white, we’ll be able to get away with just one coat of paint. We will paint the trim and doors with a semi gloss white while the walls will stay flat white. Since we were done spraying I took down all the plastic spray protection. The room is looking great!

Cleaning. And roots.

We cleaned up all of the paint tools and then went through the house and started cleaning up and organizing. It was way overdue. And because I hadn’t sweated enough today, I decided to pick a fight with some of the roots from the banyan tree. We’re going to be doing some plantings in the not so distant future and some of the big roots go right through the planting areas. Oceana joined me to assist with ripping them out of the ground. At this point I was thoroughly soaked with sweat. Perfect. Let’s go home.

Thank everyone for following along on our adventure. Don’t forget to subscribe. Have a great week!