THE NEW BARBEQUE…AND THE NEW COLOR

FRIDAY, JUNE 18, 2004

Okay, we painted, or rather, RE-painted the barbeque today. That pink was just….PINK! Much as we wanted it to be terra cotta, or even peach, it was still PINK. And for the second time this week, we discovered a new store in Marsciano. Not NEW, new, just new to us. Frank had told us about a great overstock outlet that was located in the industrial zone, and we hope to find an armadio for the bedroom there eventually, and cheap. Frank bought a bedroom set that probably would have cost over €10,000 for only €3,000. We never would have seen this place or known about it if it hadn’t been for Frank.

The store we discovered today is a paint store…the factory I think. We had walked down to the hardware store to see if they had any paint for the frill, but they didn’t have the heat resistant kind for concrete that we needed. The girl told us to go to U.P. Colori, also in the industrial zone in Marsciano. Since we weren’t sure exactly where it was, and since we had left our map of Marsciano at the house instead of leaving it in the car, we stopped at the tourist information booth in Marsciano. Luckily for us, there were two girls working, and between the two of them they figured out where it was, gave me directions, and showed me on the map. Okay!

And then we followed the directions, got to the street where it was supposed to be, and couldn’t find it! We drove around the block and asked a girl who was out walking. She pointed right across the street from where we were and said “right there”. Duh! The sign was small, very small, and was on the side of the building that faced the main drag…so once we had turned the corner to the street we knew it was on, we couldn’t see the sign!
We picked out a nice terra cotta paint, and also a can of paint for the door for the caldaio in the back yard…that will be another project.

When we got home and opened the paint bucket, the paint was VERY thick…much thicker than the other paint we had used for the first two coats, but we didn’t have anything to mix it in, so adding water was out of the question. I started with a section on the back of the grill and knew immediately that we had made a good choice. Then as I tried to smear this thick paste onto the rough concrete surface, I said to Art, “Maybe we can leave it sort of rough looking…we don’t have to cover every speck of the pink, but let a little show through and it will give it a textured look…and also be a lot less work!” Although Art was hesitant at first, eventually he saw what I was talking about and agreed that it looked good. So, now the barbeque is finished! We had a small fire in it this afternoon to start breaking it in…we used some of the wood from the garage, and boy, did it smoke! We plan to use mostly charcoal when we grill, and I hope that it doesn’t smoke as much!