Painting the Boat ~part one~

My Clematis bloomed! Isn't it lovely? Well, Friday turned out to be the day for painting our boat. We didn't decide that until after dinner, so we had to work fast in order to get the first coats down. First my man had to take off the bits and pieces of hardware that would come off (to save us time in taping!), and then we taped everything we didn't want painted. It took a long while... Do you see that row of little snaps? Each of them needed to be taped! Then we had to drive it over to my man's parents' house to work on the rest of it; his big air compressor is still over there, and it makes it go a lot easier. Next it was sanding...and sanding...and sanding. My man got all of the bigger spots with the sander, and then we both worked on the smaller or curvy places with scuff pads. Finally that was done, and we finished off the boat by taping plastic everywhere that we didn't care to have over-spray. Then came the fun part! Shaking and mixing, and finally spraying the new paint. It is very yellow, but I am pleased with how it turned out. I think it's going to be exactly what we wanted. Bright and cheerful and just right for a sunny day on the lake. And it will look very nice with our blue seats and trim inside. :) The bottom couple of coats was the plain yellow paint, but on the top two my man painted the same yellow color, only with some sparkles added to it! We had a quart mixed specially for the top with "blue galaxy" pearl and metallic flake. We aren't sure how very sparkly it will be because my man finished painting at 11pm last night, so we will have to inspect its various sparkly qualities this morning, in the sunshine, when we go back to finish it. I'll be back later with more pictures of how it turned out!