Currently the project outside in the mornings (while it's still a cool 70 degree range) has been taking down the north fence and replacing the 10+ yr old wood with modern plastic/vinyl stuff. Our neighbors to the east replaced our east fence a few years ago with a nice white plastic/vinyl
one, so we thought that by replacing the north fence which meets with theirs, it'd clean the place up a bit. The old fence came down quite easily - why is tearing apart so much easier than putting together? who thought up that? - I'm now currently working on laying out where the posts need to be dug and all that wonderful stuff that comes with putting up a pre-built fence. Boy, I can still remember that hot hot hot summer when we put up the 6' privacy fence all those years ago...
The in-house project lately has been a few things. My sister's and my's old bedroom had a few walls that needed to be redone, fortunately only the east and west walls, so after I tore off the once-perfectly-fine wallpaper which had been painted over, new sheetrock was been put up in that room and it's finally done and painted a very faint pink to go with the darker pink carpet. The closet walls needed to be replaced as well - didn't think some holes would probably be good in a closet even, but after a couple weeks of mudding, sanding, mudding, sanding (you get the picture) that room is done, the only thing needed to be done is some touch-up painting and sealing of the windows and a good cleaning of the carpet. (before/after pics below)
The second/hallway bathroom upstairs is coming along. The floor tile has been down for a few weeks now, but Lowes apparently doesn't carry much grout in-stock anymore, so I had to special order the color I needed, which is why I initially stopped working on the room. Meanwhile, backerboard went up on the walls and I have all but the east wall and a little bit of the top of the west wall to do tiling wise, and then I finally get to grout it! Yeah!
The guest room has been off and on, largely because I've been prepping to texturize the ceiling and do knockdown on the walls. Again, this means a lot of mudding and sanding to get it smooth and level, which if you've ever done is a giant pain in the butt! The heavy duty respirator mask I wear gets very hot and I'm always having to clean my safety goggles which honestly never seem to do much - I usually end up soaking my contacts overnight whenever I do a whole room sanding, because the dust just gets everywhere. Even the compound mud that says 'dust-free' -don't buy it cause it's not dust-free (however, I will say there's less dust with that stuff, but there's still dust either way you go. but for a less-hassle cleanup, the dust-free stuff works probably the best)
Another wonderful advantage to living in a small town and still knowing people you grew up with is that you can hire their kids to come and work for you! Old family friends of ours, the Wilsons, who daughter Rene was one of my parents' gymnasts, has kids who I hired to come and clean the backyard, largely rake leaves and do the stuff I could do but don't want to spend my time doing. They all seemed very eager to clean out the old cement pond in the backyard - they want me to fill it up and put in goldfish. I have to fix some of the cracks in it, but I told them that's what I always wanted to do, even when I was there age growing up in the house, but I'm still not sure how long the goldfish would last - I never could keep those little goldfish alive for longer than three days. Maybe if I get some of those bigger ones they'd live longer. Who knows. Another great thing about having the Wilsons help me was they were more than eager to shovel off the grass and dirt that had overgrown the brick patio on the east side of the house. It looks like a completely new yard on the east side. (this is a situation where I wish people would do just a little work to take care of something really neat) There's still a little cleaning I need to do, but it'll be a great place to cook out once it's all done.
More pics and stuff to come later...
