Some People Need to be Supervised

My homeowner's association is sponsoring some maintenance this week.  On Tuesday, their contractor pressure washed the decks, stairs and landings.  Mondo improvement, at least to the unstained, unpainted wood.  Looks like it might even be cedar.  The painted surfaces lost a bit of paint, which is pretty much to be expected after a pressure-washing.

Today, I watched two young men dressed in painters garb go from house-to-house scraping and painting.  Since the pressure wash dislodged a lot of paint, that part makes sense. What doesn't make sense is that the washing brought into clear focus what each individual homeowner already knew: the painted parts of our decks and railings are rotting.  And not just a little.  Take a gander at my next-door neighbor's railing.



That's what parts of mine looked like this morning.  Now that some paint has been stripped and massive rot has been exposed, you'd think it would be time to repair and replace.  You'd be wrong.  Here's what it looks like now:



They painted over the rot!  Some people need to be supervised.

I don't know what's going on.  I asked one of the guys what they were doing about the rot.  He said a carpenter was going to come in and replace all the sections of railing that have rot.  Fine, but why paint over it?

I'm just going to sit back and see what happens.  Despite the observable inefficiency, I expect it will all work out but could be highly entertaining in the meantime.