Learn French: Il peint cette poutre dans deux jours. - He is painting this beam in two days.

Just like in English, French frequently uses the present tense to talk about scheduled or highly certain future events. You could also use the futur proche (il va peindre) or futur simple (il peindra), but the present tense makes the plan feel immediate and set in stone.

Why use dans for "in two days" instead of en?

When talking about time, dans points to the specific moment in the future when the action will occur (two days from now). If you used en (en deux jours), you would be talking about the duration of the task, meaning it takes him two days of continuous work to finish painting the beam.

Since peindre ends in -dre, why is it il peint with a -t instead of a -d?

Verbs ending in -eindre, -aindre, and -oindre (like peindre, craindre, and joindre) are irregular. Unlike standard -re verbs that keep their d in the third-person singular (like vendre -> il vend), this group drops the d completely and uses the endings -s, -s, -t, giving us il peint.