i went to my sister's place this morning to finish the last piece of the porch project: painting the threshold. i thought it was going to be a quick 2-3 hours of work, but i ended up staying there until almost sunset (4pm+).

first step was to sand the threshold to get rid of any unsightly bumps. originally i thought i could do it manually with a sanding block, but ended up going with the orbital sander just because it was quicker. there wasn't too much dust but i wore a mask anyway. i used the sanding block on the edges where the orbital couldn't get to. it took about an hour to get everything sanded down so it was relatively uniform throughout.

next i put blue tape around the corners so i wouldn't accidentally get paint on the white trims. i used old newspaper as a tarp. because it was very windy, i ended up scattering a bunch of tools all over the newspapers to keep them from blowing away. the paint i used was an old gallon can of benjamin moore carbon copy, mixed on 6/2016 (back when my parents hired cleber to paint the cafe exterior). the paint had separated but all it took was just a simple stir to get it back to the dark color it once was.

learning my lesson from last time, i didn't bother priming, went straight to painting with the final color. i figured it'd take at least 3 coats, the first coating being the makeshift primer coat. the paint dried pretty quickly in the cold dry condition, maybe abut 15 minutes before it was dry to the touch. first coat looked awful (very see through, the brushstrokes were obvious), 2nd coat better, and 3rd coat the best. i also went back and did a 4th coat of touch-ups.

i was done by 2:30pm. ripping off the blue tape, i realized there was a lot of seepage and dark paint still got onto the white trims. i have to revise my technique because this happens pretty often. maybe when the weather gets warmer i can touch up the mistakes. i left the door open so the threshold can dry properly, figured it'd take an hour or so.

when i returned around 3:30pm, i saw that my sister had closed the doors, said she was 1) afraid of thieves and 2) afraid her dog would try to run outside looking for her. by then the paint was pretty much dry, but because it wasn't dry enough, there were parts where the doors scraped the threshold and removed some paint. nothing too much, nothing that can't be touched up next year, and still better than what it looked like before.

my trio of samsung 64GB microSD cards arrived today, along with my nalgene bottle. at 32 oz. it's nearly as large as my go-to drinker, the 40 oz. insulated takeya stainless steel bottle. but the nalgene is for outdoor usage, i don't plan on using it at home. i rinsed the bottle and gave it a drink to see if there were any weird flavors (none).