Always Know the weather. It can’t be said enough and I got caught by it. There was a deadline in play of Halloween since we were hosting a party and we wanted the patio to be usable for pumpkin cutting. The forecast had a chance of rain and I didn’t think that it looked that bad outside so I started prepping all the boards for a final coat of paint.

As the rain started to fall, I had to scramble a bit. I’d already been painting the header beam and it was still a bit wet. I also had a number of boards that I’d been working with on the ground in front of me. I had some plastic out to be used as a drip cloth if needed. I unfurled as much as I could, but it only covered about half of the structure. Thankfully with a garage full of stuff, A tarp was only a few steps away. These tarps have a history with home improvement. When we re-roofed the garage, this was one of the two tarps that covered the roof until it was finished and weather proof.

After I had the tarp up, I needed to continue working on the patio cover. I created a work space by taking the other end of the tarp and tacking it to the building with roofing nails. This left me with a dry area to work with. Other then occasionally moving the water out of the low spots, it worked quite well. A 2x4x10 eventually standing in the center removed most of the low spots from the tarp making things easier.

It’s a strange thing to paint when there is extreemely high humidity. Instead of being tacky, the paint became chaulky while it was trying to dry. I picked up one piece and it was like I was holding a wet piece of chaulk. Looking back, I shouldn’t have painted outside and should have cleared the garage out enough to paint in there (easier said then done).

After I was finished for the day, the tarp allowed me to create a quick lean-too to protect the wood from getting to wet. This did however cause one issue that I figured out later. I was building the 2×4′s to attach to the garage and support the cross beams under this. To get everything covered, I stacked everything up. In the process, I switched the order and the boards came out second, first, third. While minor, the distance between two of the cross beams is now 25 inches instead of 24 so the support boards don’t line up accross that span.