This 3 day weekend (for me) did not go exactly as planned. First off I hadn’t been feeling well all week and not taking it easy definitely took its toll on me. Secondly Ryan unexpectedly had to work all weekend. Thirdly – it rained on Friday – a lot!
So let’s see – Friday it rained so there was definitely no painting going on or prep work for painting. I did some shopping and relaxed mostly. When Ryan got home from his leadership retreat we watched some movies since he would be working all weekend.
Saturday it had dried up so I got started on the prep work for painting. I caulked all around the windows and siding of the area we did last year (left side of the house). Unfortunately the caulk I started with takes 7 days to dry before I can sand and paint… oops. When I ran out of caulk I bought a quicker drying caulk but I had already done more than half of the area with the slow dry stuff. So that ruled out painting on Sunday. I did however start sanding under the porch and we decided to just heat gun the paint off the area that we didn’t replace. The sanding was not coming out to my desired smoothness and we tried an orbital sander, a belt sander and a grinder with a sanding pad. The last one was too hard to control and is definitely getting returned.
Caulking finished. Next up a quick sand.
Finally came Sunday – we started by installing our new antenna up on the porch roof and connecting it to the patch panel in the basement. Then Ryan began working and I decided it was a good day to work on the deck. I got 16 boards in by myself, then sanded the 2 sections (from last time and this time), and finally stained them before it rains this week. I’m very excited, I think if we have one more day to work on the deck we can finish the section that’s currently demolished. Almost half way around the wrap around porch!
Porch progress
– quick side note – these pictures were taken in near DARK. My camera is pretty cool and will automatically leave the shutter open longer if it’s dark out (I keep the flash off at all times) so as long as I hold the camera steady I get decent evening shots! This works great since we work on the house until it’s dark.
Another porch view
I ended the day by cleaning, I vacuumed up the porch area (the sanding yesterday and today made a dusty mess) and then I vacuumed the whole house because the little spiders were really getting to me. Now the house is decently clean and I can relax with my book.