Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Light at the End of the Tunnel

The front of our house is FINALLY starting to look somewhat normal.  It's been a long road, but at least we're progressing!  Here's a view of the front from this past Saturday evening.  It was still a bit warm outside, and, since we had connected the fans, Greg and I decided to pull out our camp chairs and enjoy a beer on our porch, with the slight breeze of the fans cooling down our overworked and very weary selves.


And, this is an up-close picture of Greg, enjoying his much deserved beer.  Isn't he cute???


On Sunday we did a lot of work, but the house didn't look much different - we had to sand and paint the PVC trim on the interior part of the porch (which took forever, but looks much better now in person than it did on Saturday).  We also had to re-hang the shutters on the second floor because, although not noticeable in the above picture, the shutter on the right side was actually a bit crooked, and had to come all the way down to be put back up again (hooray for doing work twice - ugh!).  I also had to touch-up paint the shutters downstairs, because some parts got chipped during the installation process.  

We decided how we're going to trim the columns and got one base moulding cut to size, but we didn't install it yet.  So, we still have to get that done, then install the railings, then add lattice in frames below the porch to finish off our project.  I'm sure it will all take longer than I'd like it to, but I'm really happy that our house is finally starting to look cute.  Maybe by Halloween we'll be ready for Trick or Treaters without worrying that they will hurt themselves on construction debris to get to our front door.  Fingers crossed everyone!!!

Friday, September 21, 2012

I See a White Door and I Want to Paint it...RED!!!!

So, a few weeks ago, I posted a picture of our completed decking and skirting.  Since then, I got a chance to paint our shutters and our door to give our house a bit more curb appeal.

Before:
Notice the dingy, boring door that oh so nonchalantly blends right in with the columns.

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Porchity-Porch-Porch PoRcH PORCH!!!!

Ahhh...I haven't talked about how we're doing with our porch renovation since June.  That's almost a lifetime in renovation years!  We are getting very close to the end/final touches part of the work - which is actually my favorite time since I finally get to see how things will really look.  I have some pictures from roughly 2-3 weeks ago, and since then even we've completed more stuff.  Here's where we were around the middle of August:

We got the decking laid down and the columns wrapped in white.  We also took down the old siding.  In the below pics, you'll see the new siding mostly complete (although there's still some upper siding work to be done.)

The Love Dare Hiatus

So I think Greg and I got to somewhere around Day 11 in The Love Dare, and we haven't really been interested in it since then.  I'm not sure what the problem is.  Part of me wonders if it's because we're both too lazy and/or apathetic to really try to make our marriage a more loving, kind, wholesome one ala June and Ward Cleaver...but another part of me wonders if it's just because there's simply too many references to God, the Bible, and Jesus, which kind of makes each of us feel just a little bit uncomfortable.

The thing about the book that bothers me the most is that it constantly refers to difficult times in your marriage - it often makes references about being mad at your partner, feeling unloved by your spouse, etc.  I don't know if it's because Greg and I have only been married for 4.5 years, if it's because we don't have children, or if it's because our relationship isn't what it should be - but this book makes me feel like we should be fighting more and using the book as a tool to make up for all the wrongs we've done to each other.  The thing is that we really honestly don't fight much.  I mean we bicker, and have disagreements - but recently they've been mostly about how we're constructing the porch - and our disagreements usually are a result of Greg wanting to do everything 100% accurately and correct and me having no patience to sit around waiting for him to make a decision.  Which probably is demeaning to him and isn't productive for me, but really, we usually are able to talk out our frustrations and move on.