So what did you miss during my extended blog break of a few months?
Birthdays, summer with all three kids, Boyscouts, reunions, travels, parks, church activities, camps, tons and tons of painting, friends, work, calligraphy and homeschooling. I am sure there are several items that I missed because it seems as if we didn’t come up for a breath of air in the past few months. However, I am happy to announce that the biggest chore that has been hanging over our heads since we moved into this house has been accomplished. I paid some remodel guys come over and replace all the rotten siding and wood around the house exterior. They caulked and primed everything. Then I got some estimates for exterior painting and gutters. No to painting estimates, yes to gutter estimates. This left me standing there with a paint brush in hand staring up at, what seemed to look like the Eiffel Tower before me. I borrowed the neighbor’s ladder, tested out some colors from Sherwin Williams, and then just went for it. I spent most of the scorching summer hanging off a ladder painting the siding and trim. After swatting all the hornets and mosquitoes and wiping away the buckets of sweat, it was well worth it. The house looks like a million bucks compared to before. The last two items on the agenda are to rebuild the front porch steps, which are rotted, and repair the garage door rot.
Here is the back while in the painting process.
Another shot of the back. The chimney was ridiculus. I had to call in reinforcements to paint the top of that. No way was I going to climb up that high, and I'm not even afriad of heights.
If you look closely, you will see that we painted the porch ceiling a soft blue color. You know, they say that painting a porch ceiling blue wards off evil spirits, but I am pretty sure the evil spirits had aready been here...However, they left our house after it started to fall apart and went to a nearby swim/tennis neighborhood.
I should also mention that we stripped/sanded and stained our front door. Originally, I had thought about replacing the unit with something better, but after some more thought, I decided that I didn't mind the style of the door. I just hated the paint layers all over it. So I convinced Husband to start scraping with me on the weekends. Things got hot and heavy (no seriously, the temps hovered at about 100 degrees) and then we took turns stripping in front of each other. Sorry, I couldn't resist... Anyways, the finished results are stellar, because the wood has an antiquey quality to it due to the paint layers. This picture was taken during mid-strip so you can see all the gunk that had to be removed before refinishing.
Newly painted garage. You can see the rotten spot on the door that we will have to address at some point.
After the house was painted, the gutter guys came and put on all new gutters and downspouts. Now the rain is directed away from the house to prevent any new rot. It is amazing! I can’t tell you how relived I am to be done with this project. Next on the agenda is to put in new porch stairs with pretty banisters and rails. Stay tuned for more remodel projects. We have several going on that will blog about real soon!
Wow! We have waited all winter for snow, as you know, we usually get two light dustings a year. There was one “big” snow the first year we lived in GA and it was a white-out with very little visibility. I was driving when it happened and everyone had to pull over on the side of the road for about fifteen minutes. The snow we are getting right now was predicted, so we were ready. I covered up my seedlings with a tarp and bundled the kids in warm clothes. We slept in, ate a big brunch of sausage, cheesy eggs and biscuits, and then ran out to play. Unfortunately, it is the wet snow with rain and ice mixed in, the kind that falls as snow and immediately turns your hair soaking wet. But beggars can’t be choosers and the kids have been asking me since October when it was going to snow. You know, because moms know everything, right?
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