Well...It's Brown

Painting is Done

The painters have been paid.  We thought we were getting a decent deal, and while they had a lot to do with 3 different colors, we still had to stay on top of them to make sure they were doing what we had asked for.

We will be taking pictures tonight (they literally just finished up).  The house looks good, but unfortunately in the front since it was predominately brick, and still is predominately brick, there isn't a big WOW factor.   Which is kind of depressing since we just spent all that money.  And for all those curious people the total came in at:

$2600 - labor (they painted for 5.5 days)
$1100 - paint (we went through 28 gallons)
$600 cedar braces

Work in Progress

Originally we thought they would be done painting on Saturday.  It seems to be taking them longer than they thought, and now it looks like it might be completed on Tuesday.

I guess it's not just us when projects always go longer than they should, it's just our house!

Major Exterior Changes

Our house is being painted tomorrow.  This is the last time it will look like this with a peachy tan exterior and burnt orange trim.

We can't wait.

More Brace Work

I thought you might want to actually see what these braces look like that we have been installing for the last couple of weeks.

The top ones were easier to install, except the very high ladder needed to reach them.

 The second level was our soffit which was sloping terribly.  We needed to jack it up to near level and then install the braces.  Here was our 17 foot garage side where we had to create a column and use the car jack to get it up.

 Jesse in action installing a brace.

 And Elle, who no matter what project you are working on, likes to drop her ball and will patiently wait for you to throw it.  Even if you are 17 feet in the air, she will place it next to the ladder and wait.

The countdown is on for our house to get painted.  The painting crew is coming on Thursday, so it will be a busy weekend outside prepping for everything.

What do you do with ugly?

 

We had this old chandelier in our entryway that we took down a couple of months ago.  They still sell new ones similar to it at the home improvement stores for $200.  I tried to sell it on craigslist for $40.  And no one wanted to buy it.  So I decided to spray paint it black.

I took out the chandelier part and replaced it with a candle.  I added some fall foilage to spruce up our entryway.

As you can see it's a work in progress.

I bought the wreath last year before we stained the doors, and it looks like I am going to have to come up with something else, as it blends into the doors.  I also haven't replaced my summer plants with fall mums yet. I might not this year, as it's getting kind of late in the season.

Maybe some day my entryway will look like this for Halloween.

Outside Work

We started working on the exterior of the house this weekend.  And no, we are not finished with the interior stairs.  Our goal is the get the house painted before the weather gets too cold, so we need to get a bunch of things done before that.

Originally we thought we would be doing the painting ourselves, but that would take us about 2 months, so we opted to have it done professionally.  As it is it's going to take us 2-3 weeks to get the prep work done before they can start painting.  We have brackets to install, landscaping to remove, trees to trim, etc.

On Saturday night we joined our neighbors around a firepit.  Does anyone else get together with neighbors and complain about their houses.....for hours?  All the work that needs to be done, the questionable things the previous owners did, all the money everything is costing etc?  Okay maybe it's just us, but at least all our neighbors are in the same boat.