Home maintenance

We worked our booties off this weekend. We started on Saturday morning with a borrowed pressure washer (thanks, Van!) and attacked some peeling paint on some trim on the front of our house and around our garage doors. We just had a few small spots that were peeling, but we didn't want the situation to get worse before we did anything about it. The trim is rough cedar, which makes it difficult to use a scraper on, so we pressure washed it, which effectively removed most of the paint, whether it was peeling or not.

Jeff washes the window

Jeff peels paint off the trim

I'm helping... really!

After getting the paint off the trim, we washed the brick, the porch, the back of the house, and the back deck, which was returned to its original gray color, rather than staying the slightly green hue it had developed. Then we took a break to run some errands (pick up winterizer for the lawn, pick up replacement glass for some of our light fixtures, pick up dog treats, detour to Linens-n-Things for their going out of business sale, score a cheap roasting pan and some wood hangars, pick up Chipotle for lunch) and let the trim dry. We spent the afternoon taping and priming the trim, and collapsed afterwards for a relaxing evening at home.

We took advantage of our extra hour on Sunday morning to get our grocery shopping done and toss some beef stew in the crock pot (thanks, Mary and Luis!) before church so we could spend the afternoon painting the trim and winterizing the lawn. Those tasks didn't take nearly as long as Saturday's tasks did, which meant we were able to get over to the gym for a quick workout before sitting down to enjoy dinner. We felt like very responsible homeowners when all was said and done. We also felt like bad disciples because the sermon on Sunday morning was about keeping the Sabbath... sigh.