Just chillin' and attack of mammoth moth

We are still enjoying our break from the heat!!  I cannot make myself stay inside --it is just too gorgeous outside.  We are becoming re-acquainted with our neighbors as everyone has been coccooned inside with the AC for months now.

Honey broke out the ladder and I climbed up and painted the trim around the upper windows.  No before pics - sorry.  I did not want any extra time on that elevation!! 

As I have mentioned our house was built in the 1980's and has every icky 80's design element you can imagine - including tons of 80's brassy brass which I have been on a mission to remove.  Even the front porch was blessed with brassy brass


Brassy brass house numbers



While I was shaking like a leaf working on the ladder I removed the house numbers.  The picture above was taken after I removed them.  That nastiness is my painting board - not my house.  (Just to clarify).  I had a few sample sizes of Behr with primer left from other projects and decided I had a good enough color for the porch.  So I scrubbed the brassy brass numbers with deglosser to hopefully help the paint stick and slapped 2 coats of paint on.  Then I sprayed them with clear flat spray paint.  I love that stuff!!  It seemed to work - I tried scratching them with my fingernails and the paint stuck.  Awesome!!

So then it was back on the ladder to rehang them.

This picture also shows how nice and crisp the trim is on the upper windows.  You will just have to take my word for it - there was caulk everywhere!!  I think they actually just stood in the yard and threw handfulls of caulk in the vicinity of the upper windows!!  But it is fixed now and I feel like our porch is so much more welcoming now!!

I even put a nail back in the door that I refinished - I really had to talk myself into that one!  Now my fall wreath is finally in place.  Of course - it may look silly next week when temperatures are supposed to be in the mid 90's.  But it will remind me that fall will arrive  -- hopefully.

I almost forgot the BEST part of the porch adventure today.  Since I did not want to climb any higher on the ladder than I had to, I could not actually see the top of the trim.  Evidentally a Ginormous ridiculously huge moth had made a nice little home up there.  And evidentally when I was painting his home - I painted him, too.  And painted him ALOT.  And evidentally I painted over his eyes because the wet paint coated moth flew into everything.  And I mean ev-er-y-thing.  So I spent an hour or so scrubbing moth shaped paint splats off the brick, the chair, the window - well you get the idea.  I did manage to maintain my deathgrip on the ladder and did not fall off while being buzzed by angry paint covered moth.  But on that note - I did have to scrub a paint brush shaped paint splat off the side walk.  Moths are not on my happy list right now.

Happy DIY'ing

Susan

The dome is broken!!!!!

The heat dome that has been trapped over us for the entire summer has finally been broken!!  Sautrday was once again over 100 degrees.  Miserable!!  But Sunday (and they are saying for the next 14 days) was in the 80's.  Wooo Hooo!!!


So instead of being inside working on my stairs like I probably should have been - I found as many projects as possible to do outside.

I cleaned the craptastic shelves off on one side of the garage.  No pics as that would be really boring.  But it has really been bothering me and I am soooo glad to get it done!  I have several bags for charity and the trash can was full. 

Then it was on to the front porch.  Well at least part of it.  You may remember me saying that we had new windows installed last Thanksgiving.  It was probably the best thing we have bone for this house.  Even with the record breaking summer - our electricity bills have been the lower this year than the past 3 or 4 years.  However, the window installers were horrible caulkers.  You may remember here where I whined told about repainting inside the windows where they had done the over caulking job of the century.  Well the outside was not spared this embarrassment either.  But right after we had them done it turned cold - way too cold for me to paint outside.  Then after the 12 days of spring this year it was too hot.  Now it is just right - says Goldilocks

Here are the before of the house that caulk built

This is not a true before because I had been outside for an hour scraping caulk off the actual window frame.

And bless their little hearts - they actually used paintable caulk outside!!  So after scrubbing and then a coat of paint...

Soo much better!!!!  The pictures really don't do it justice.  It is so much crisper.  I still have three little windows above these to do.  But those require the ladder so Honey has to get that out for me.  And fortunatley the rest of the downstairs windows are surrounded by brick and they did a great job caulking those.  Notice I said downstairs windows.  Yep - there are 4 windows upstairs that are not surrounded by brick.   That.will.be.fun. 

But for now....  Happy DIY'ing!!

Susan