Painting the House

Monday morning of last week the kids and I walked out of the house at 7:30 am and ran into this at our front door...

Not knowing how to speak Czech, and not finding anyone to talk to even if I did, means I had a lot of questions as to what was going on, but no answers.  And then, by the time I got back home from breakfast, I saw this...

At this point it would be a pretty good guess that they were finally going to clean up the side wall.  They had removed the growing vines about a year ago, but never done anything about the remnants of plant and dirt that were left behind like some sort of fossil painting.  But then I got another surprise when I left my house just before lunch...

Now, the whole house was covered in this scaffolding.  It was now obvious that not only were they going to clean the side wall, but they were going to clean it all and then paint.  Which I am totally cool with.  But it would have been nice for someone to have informed us.  We didn't get a single email, note taped to the door or slipped in the mailbox, or phone call.  Nothing.  I don't mind the fact that we were getting a fresh coat of paint, but it would have been nice to be able to plan.  I had to close all of the windows (ugh - it was still about 90 degrees out.  And no air conditioning.  And that means stuffy) and I had to make sure all of the blinds were closed in the bedrooms, and hand towels over the windows in the bathrooms.  Wouldn't do to give them all a peep show.

They worked hard and fast.  Here they are blasting away the remnants of the climbing vine that first morning...

And by late afternoon they had it all done and ready for painting...

In all it took them just 5 days to get it done.  And the house looks beautiful.  But it is very odd that we still have not been notified that our house is being painted.  Expat life, I guess.