Progress on the Exterior Side Entry

Back in May I shared some embarrassing photos of our fallen-to-ruins side entry. We decided that we would do a few fix-ups to it over the summer to make it more presentable. Also, it's ugliness was pretty much driving me insane.

 

The first thing we did was to scrape and sand all of the painted wood. We tried to get as many flaking paint chips off as we could with a metal scraper, and then used an electric sander on everything else. Sanding the walls wasn't too bad, but the ceiling was brutal. Just so you know, paint and old wood dust doesn't taste very good. How about we add that to my list of things that I never want to do again.

 

Once all the wood was sanded, we gave everything a thorough cleaning with T.S.P. We picked up a gallon of primer from Home Depot, Zinsser Primer-Sealer Stain Killer to be exact, and primed all of the painted and exposed wood. We even gave an extra little coat of primer to the areas that were really flaking off. Just to make sure they were really covered and sealed up.

Of course with a little bit of primer the whole area is looking SO much better. I secretly want to just leave it as is and pretend that I painted but don't tell anyone that I'm super lazy like that, m'kay?

Here are the before pictures:

Before - Yuck!

Before - Yuck!

 

And here are the progress pictures:

Progress - Primer + Weeding

Progress - Primer + Weeding

Now that Coopaloops is super entertained by rocks and pebbles, I was able to let him play in the driveway the last two afternoons while I dug out all the grass and weeds that had grown in our driveway alongside our cement curbs. In the above photo you can see that on the left hand side of the concrete slab there are grass and weeds growing in the gravel and on the right hand side of the slab you can see that I pulled them all out (all the way from the house to the sidewalk)(it was a pretty long stretch)(please give me a virtual high five because it was tres sucky)(that might be French-Canadian for very sucky but I'm not really sure because I don't speak French).

 

So, that's our little bit of progress. Our next steps are to paint over the primer with Cloud White exterior paint by Benjamin Moore as well as install the light fixture that we picked up a few weeks ago.

P.S. We have a few decisions to make about the door situation but I'll leave that dilemma for another day. Dun dun dun.....

P.S.S. Thanks for being cute.

P.S.S.S. When I was getting ready to mow the lawn last night I came across a giant, black, fuzzy caterpillar that I thought Cooper would absolutely love. Since he was already in bed for the night I decided to go in the house for a container to keep him in overnight. Except my A.D.D. brain got distracted by something and I went back outside and mowed the lawn. Poor caterpillar has been M.I.A. ever since. I've been telling myself that he turned into a butterfly and flew away. It's been helping with the guilt. :(