Days 1+2

The Painting Project has begun!! So far, it's just consisted of scraping the old paint off. I spent Saturday scraping the front porch. Then on Sunday, Mikey worked on the side of the house (on the big lift) while I scraped the back porch. It's pretty slow going. Here are some pics of our progress:

The BIG LIFT (Mikey loved it!):
After getting up close to every square inch of our siding, the 100 years of wear and tear have become quite apparent. I'm a little concerned at the quantity of rotting wood (siding, trim, etc) we have. Once our neighbor (former contractor) gets back from vacation tomorrow, I'm going to pick his brain about a game plan. The perfectionist in me has a hard time "just getting by." I want to do it right and have it done perfectly rather than notice all the blemishes every time we're outside. The one thing I'm going to have to be OK with is the crummy trim around the windows. I'm only OK with this for now since we'll hopefully be getting new windows in the next 3 years and will take care of the trim at that point. Aye, house projects! I guess this is what they call Sweat Equity!

We've really done nothing else all weekend. I've put in about 18 hours of scraping during the past 3 days. We were really on a roll on Sunday and decided to order Papa John's for dinner. Great idea at the time but horrible decision later on. Both of us got sick to our stomachs. It even kept me up at night. Not good. Must stay the course of healthier food! So tonight I had oatmeal with raspberry applesauce and a sprinkle of brown sugar and a pita with hummus. My body is much happier.

Cross your fingers for minimal rain this week and especially next weekend for the real fun- painting!