After ten years staring at the fading garage doors, I finally painted them both, and what a difference! The whole outbuilding has been repaired slowly over the years, a new roof on one half a while ago when the giant willow fell on it in a storm, half the windows and doors painted last year, a bit of plastering by Lee to sort out the dodgy breeze block addition. A lot of the work we do is just to keep things in their current state, so it's rewarding to be able to make something better and improve it.
Most French paint is interesting...twice the price of UK paint and half the quality. This stuff is incredibly sticky to put on, you almost have to spread it rather than paint it. So it was sad to discover at the end that I had no white spirit to get the deep red stain of my hands, so my hands looked like I'd committed murder for a week afterwards. In the UK this traditional 'Basque Rouge' would be 'Ox-blood Red'!