But that hasn’t stopped Ben and I from putting the finishing touches on the chook house though. Before Amy and Megan departed, I asked them to lift the chook house up onto the trellis table, so that Ben and I could get to work the next day. Yesterday we gave it a lick of paint. Here we are in action. I had some left over exterior paint in the shed, and some old brushes, so we didn’t need to buy anything.
Nice heritage green, don’t you think. We painted the east and south facing walls green so that the house warms up in the morning whilst the chooks will be laying. We painted the north and west facing sides off-white, so that it was cooler in the afternoon during the warmer months. Well, that is my theory anyway.
It took me a while to explain the colour plan to Ben, and how dark colours absorb heat and light colours reflect heat. There were so many questions, and I started to explain the colour spectrum, but lost him in the process. So I did a simple demonstration. As it was fairly sunny, we touched a dark thing (the inside gate) and it was warm, then we touched a light thing (the front gate) and it was cool. That was enough to stop all the questions!
Once we had finished with the green, I showed him how to wash his brush out in water, and how to dry it on newspaper so we could use it again, and then we got stuck into the off-white.
A good artist must reflect on his work, of course and Ben is no exception. Note the detached roof behind him.
We had such a great time together, and joked and larked around. As Ben likes to play Role Playing Games on his PC, so therefore, everything we do gets converted to experience points. I kept dropping the brush (must be my sensitive I.T. hands), and Ben kept taking away experience points from me. By the end of the job, I think he ended up with 100 points and I had about 20. He is a cheeky little boy, that’s for sure!
Ben knows how to wipe the excess paint off of his brush, and learnt that if you flick your brush around when laden with paint, Dad gets grumpy. He only did it once, and I then had to show him how to clean pain off of the cement with a wet cloth. So much learnt in so little a time! Here is the green sides finished and drying.
It took us a few hours, and the lads interest didn’t waver for the whole time. I was impressed with our work and Ben’s skills, and as we plastered the paint on so thick, I don’t think that it will need a second coat. Kim says that the off-white is very bland, so she is going to put some finishing touches on it today to make it look more interesting. I can’t wait and see what she comes up with.After dinner last night, we watch the movie “Chicken Run”, so that we could get some ideas for names for the yet to be purchased hens. So far we have Ginger, Babs, Bunty, Doll Face, Edwina, and Agnes. That gives us a few to choose from. I like the first three the best, and they make me laugh inside when I think of them. What a great movie and a fun day.
Hi Gavin,
a few more names for the chickens would be… stir fry, schnitzel, catchatore etc.
Looks like your having fun. keep up the good work
Phil
http://www.campqualitycountrymiletour.blogspot.com
the boy isure growing gav.thats got to be more fun than playing computer games ?
I was going to say more or less the same as your dad’s already said. If only more kids were ‘out there’ doing real stuff instead of living an imaginary life in front of a computer screen.