Today's Lessons Learned

I don't have any photos today. I worked for seven hours today and feel I have little to show for it. What I did do looks exactly like past photos so you can look at those and imagine I did the same thing again today. This project is definitely hitting the tedium point right about now. However, I did finish scraping the lattice (ugh, finally). Taken together, I learned these lessons today:

1) The four-way stop on the corner by our house seems to be only a suggestion to most drivers.
2) Pandora plays the same damn commercial over and over again so you feel required to buy a subscription only if to maintain your sanity.
3) Painting lattice is only a little less loathsome than scraping it.
4) I'm tired.

That's all I got.

The Great Esc(r)ape: "It's comin' along!"

"It's comin' along!" These are the words guiding today's post as we've heard them at least a hundred times this weekend as we continued to scrape and paint. There's not much to say, really, same-old, same-old (i.e., scrape, paint, repeat). So, we'll just nix the yakkity-yak and show you the goods:

As Tim says, "It's gettin' there."

Knock, knock...

Our 8-year-old is a big fan of knock-knock jokes. So, in Ohara's honor, I present this to you:

Knock, knock.

Who's there?

Lattice.

Lattice who?

Lattice please be done scraping now.

Ugh.

We are nearing the final stretch of scraping on the front porch, now moving to the outside. One piece to be tackled - and perhaps the most formidable - is the lattice, as you see below.

I was able to get a lot of the fronts of the lattice strips and even the tops but getting behind, as you can see, is not quite as easy. 

Taking this break to whine, perhaps it's worthwhile to mention at this time the various scraping accoutrements that have come to our aid in this pain-staking process. 

As pictured above, you can see the very helpful gloves (those heat guns are hot!), a couple of the scrapers that came along with the Speed Heater, and various and sundry other scrapers and implements that have come in handy along the way. Nevertheless, none of these are quite right to get those lattice strips that rest behind the front ones. Grr.

We are making painting progress, however. Tim has begun scraping and painting under the eaves and it's really looking nice. One piece we have left, though, is the wood surround by the front door. I was hoping we would be able to strip it completely so it went along with the front door (open slightly ajar in photo) but it's not looking promising. We'll probably end up painting it but deciding on the pattern feels daunting. We'll also have to figure out what to do with the screen door. Tim and I put that in a few years ago when the house was white. Now that it will be not so much white, it's going to be a bit of an eyesore. Decisions, decisions...