I hold onto my career these days with part-time work as an independent contractor — and by “career,” I mean the work I’ve been doing much of my life, what I went to school for, and for which I always thought I had some natural ability, as compared with this hands-on landlording stuff which I’m learning as I go. The part-time gigs keep my skills fresh but don’t sustain life.

I travel a bit in that role as a career lady, and the travel takes me regularly to another house in my domain, where I keep a room for myself and my dog companion.  I do my landlording projects while I’m there, then scrape off the paint or whatever and be a briefcase lady for a couple of hours.

But it’s July.  I can’t afford a vacation, but others take them so there’s less of the briefcase work.  I didn’t have to travel last week, so I stayed at the brick house and did a project my insurance agent ordered me to do if I wanted to keep my coverage.

Built around 1830, the original part of the brick house has a second floor porch with screen doors into each of the three original bedrooms and windows into two of them.  I can open the doors and windows in the spring and leave them open all summer.  The porch is deep enough so that the rain never comes in.  Nineteenth century air conditioning.

One problem with the design is that, while rain doesn’t reach the doors and windows on that porch, rain and snow does land on the wooden floor.  Wet leaves blow onto it in the fall, pile up over winter and rot the deck. I had the whole thing ripped off and rebuilt about 12 years ago, when there was money to hire contractors.  You could tell when they had it dismantled that it had been rebuilt previously, at least once in the house’s first 150 years.  So I’ve got a 12-year-old wooden deck that needs to be preserved.

The second problem with that porch is a stucco-like material that was used on the walls and ceilings that seems to dislike every substance ever applied to it — I’ve patched and painted it three times in the 25 years I’ve owned this place and it just keeps cracking, peeling and falling out in chunks.

The ceiling in particular is a museum of failed materials that were tried to keep the masonry in place over the years.  Other than hiring a forensic engineer to tell me what doesn’t work, I decided just to keep it protected with paint and to fix the small cracks before they spread.

Except I didn’t.  It’s been 10 years since the last paint job up there, and the peeling and chunking was way out of control.

It was scary.

I spent two days on the ladder with a 6-inch scraper, knocking down the loose stuff, then brushed on a thick coat of Kilz water-based primer.  I read once that water-based paint works better on masonry, but my main reason for using the Kilz was that I had a five-gallon bucket of it on hand.  The ceiling and three walls sucked up most of the five gallons.

I had several gallons left over of the trim paint used on the rest of the house last time it was painted — again, back when there was money to hire contractors.  Benjamin Moore latex exterior is the best, in my opinion.  Goes on smoothly, doesn’t drip, gives great coverage and sticks to whatever you paint it onto.  Worth the price — about $50 a gallon.  Luckily, I bought extra five years ago.

The only things I had to buy for this job were two extra-fuzzy roller covers — $7 for the pair, one of which I used for painting and the other got chewed by a Boston terrier; one gallon of black Benjamin Moore for the inside of the railing, used about half of it, $50; and a jug of brush cleaner, $5 — total output $62.

Had I purchased the primer and all the paint, the job would have cost about $250 and would not have been done this staycation.

It took three days and three doses of Aleve to get this far.

I’m happy with the result.

I always forget how much better things looks with fresh paint.

Still have the floor to do before winter.  I’m tired now, so I’m thinking of painting it rather than restoring the natural wood.  Perhaps I’ll reconsider by the time I get back to it.

Vacation time is over and I’m back in the flow.  Have to focus on jobs that promise more immediate rewards.  It is satisfying, though, to look up from the front yard and not see that grungy old ceiling.  Hope my insurance agent is pleased.