More Work Around the House

 Today's gripe - I cannot get used to this time change!
It was already starting to get dark earlier, because that seems to happen during the fall/winter months.  Then it gets speeded up by an hour - and here I am, at 7:00 p.m., thinking that it's time to go to bed.

Last post I talked about staining the deck.  One thing leads to another; now that the deck looked nice, the mildew-stained front of the house looked less than stellar.  I washed it when I power washed the deck, so it's not dirty, just stained.  So my next trip to the chiropractor was also a trip to Home Depot for paint.

But first . . . (there's always a but first, right?) there was a Side Quest.  Obviously the paint would have to match the rest of the house.  I knew we had a sample sized can of color matched paint.  In The Barn.  I even knew more-or-less where it should be - in a cabinet in the back.  In the process of clearing a path to get there I looked at whatever was in my way - and most of it was moved to the front of the barn to be taken to the dump (I have no need, for example, for large boxes full of old phone coax cable (Bob's father used to work for a phone company).  Then I opened the cabinet, with its decades worth of old paint, stripper, fillers, etc.  And most of that also got dragged to the front.  It was enough to fill up the car for a trip to the dump yesterday.

But miracle of miracles, I did find the paint that I needed, and got it matched, and got the front of the house painted (except for the white trim - that's for another day) and it looks much nicer.  I should have taken a before picture - but it was a little embarrassing to have let it get so grungy.

 

Of course, by contrast now, the porch looks really neglected, in need of a good all-over cleaning and possibly some fresh paint itself.  Sigh.

But yesterday I did drag the power washer over to the cottage and cleaned both decks and stained them today.  And in the process noticed that a couple of boards on the front deck seriously need to be replaced.  Again - it's always something.  For now I'm just going to put my little goat statue on that spot so I won't step on it.  At least for the side deck I got before-and-after pictures.

I'm not 100% happy with the color of the stain.  I didn't like last year's either - it had a sort of pinkish tone.  The one I chose this year (Chestnut brown) was a rich brown on the can - and this sort of milk chocolate color on the decks.  But it will protect the wood, and next year I'll try yet another color.  Eventually I'll get it right.

I think that's enough outside work for now - other than doing some weed whacking.  I have a lot of fallen branches to pick up, and I also want to dismantle and burn the old fence around the butterfly garden.  But we've been oddly dry lately - I don't think it's rained for at least a month.  I could do a fire if I had a big open field, but I'm right at the edge of the woods and I don't want to risk starting a forest fire, so that job can wait.

Besides, Mike's coming in three weeks for our Universal adventure, so it might behoove me to clean the *inside* of the house.

But for now - think I've earned some couch-sitting time.