Old House Handyman: Reflecting on the dad-daughter ritual of painting the old barn

I was just about to dash out the front door, well before sunrise last Saturday, when I remembered what happened in the past when I wore my favorite Columbus Blue Jackets “White Out” T-shirt in public.

The shirt is the one I wear each time we paint a side of the old barn on the family farm – the red barn. The one with paint so bright red that when it lands on my white shirt, I could be mistaken for a gunshot victim.

And I was.

A few years ago, I had to dash out for supplies while we were painting. Without giving a thought to the clothes I was wearing, I ran into a store to see horror on the faces of the clerk and other shoppers. They were clearly weighing whether they should call 911 before I hit the floor in a puddle of ... red paint.

Old House Handyman: Rebuilding a porch requires research, extra pair of hands

I apologized and assured them that the only thing I was bleeding was cash because of the price of paint these days. (One of my colleagues suggested that I could save a little money if I got more paint on the barn and less on my shirt.)

So, to avoid frightening anyone last Saturday, and because it was a chilly morning, I grabbed a flannel shirt and covered up the red splatters for the drive to the farm.

And from about 8 a.m. to after 6 p.m., as the temperature soared from 55 to 85, Daughter #3 and I were on ladders slinging oil-based, International Harvester-red paint onto the south-facing, broad side of the barn.

We talked about the smelly paint and the heat, of course, but we also talked about the cicadas, crickets and katydids singing in the meadow; about dogs barking on the next ridge; about the hawks and airplanes flying overhead, and about the clip-clop of horses' hooves as Amish families passed by in buggies and wagons.

We glanced as they passed to find that they were staring at us. They weren’t quick looks. Parents pointed their children to watch us — head-turning, neck-craning, long looks.

Old House Handyman: Replacing bathroom plumbing leads to full house pipe upgrades

And in those moments, roles were reversed. We had a slight idea of what it feels like to be a tourist attraction in Amish country.

“I’m glad we could give them something to look at and talk about,” my daughter said. “What do you think they were saying about us?”

I figured they were probably wondering why we were using 4-inch-wide brushes to paint a wall that is 50 feet long and 20 feet tall. It would be a logical question in an age when we could have spray-painted it in a half hour.

We actually did that once on that same side of the barn. We had rented a lift and borrowed a sophisticated, motorized sprayer from our neighbor. He was out baling hay when we were ready to start, and I needed his guidance to operate the machine, so he graciously stopped making hay long enough to help me.

When he saw the lift, he said, “I bet we can get this done in 20 minutes. I’ll paint while you drive the lift. When I say up, you go up. When I say down, you go down. When I say ho, you stop. Time me!”

And off we went, up and down and across the face of the barn – in under 20 minutes.

It was so much fun.

But we learned an important lesson when the paint peeled off within a year or two: If you spray-paint rough surfaces such as barn siding, you need to roll it immediately after spraying to push the paint into the pores, experts told us.

Old House Handyman: Locating leak in bathroom turns into total makeover

As the wood weathered and cracked, we found that even rolling it wasn’t enough to get the paint to adhere properly. So we brush it on, and now the paint lasts five to 10 years or more, depending on the side of the barn and the weather it gets. South and west take a beating from sun, wind and rain, so those sides require more frequent painting. North and east are much easier to maintain because they see far less weather.

We paint one side a year, as needed. We’ve done three sides in three years, so we’re likely due for one more next year, and then I hope we can retire my blood-red splattered shirt for few years.

Alan D. Miller is a former Dispatch editor who teaches journalism at Denison University and writes about old house repair and historic preservation based on personal experiences and questions from readers.

youroldhouse1@gmail.com

@youroldhouse

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Old House Handyman: Dad, daughter paint old red barn