Big Weekend Project!

This weekend we will be pressure washing our house. Luckily my brother inlaw has a machine he is going to let us borrow. On Monday we are going to have a contractor begin stucco patching and repair. The stucco has come off near all of our down spouts on the gutters. They also took out 2 windows at some point, one of in the bathroom shower (thank god) the other in the kitchen above the stove. There isn't much wall space in the kitchen so I see the need for the window to be gone- however there isn't much light. It's really a toss up. They are going to come over and put the texture back up to make our house look good again. Then we will paint this fall. Here are the problem areas:




As you can tell we need new gutters too. I doubt gutters will be a huge expense but I guess you never know. We are painting the house a medium taupe and all the trim will be white. I am so excited. Our curb appeal will sky rocket once this is complete.

As promised, here is a close up of our required 40% open fence:


And finally, we are going to have a BBQ on Saturday July 11th, friends, neighbors and fellow bloggers in Minneapolis are welcome. If you would like directions and time please email me at ssetzer@athomeapartments.com We'd love to meet you!

The Fence Is Halfway There!

I Finished sanding, staining and polying all of the woodwork on the fireplace, archway, window and DR baseboard. It looks amazing! Since I got all of this complete, I decided to paint the firsplace a charcoal/ flynt color. It looks really good. The couches don't really flow with it but we plan on replacing those this winter. Check out how nicely everything cam out:


Since we were putting up the fence I decided to complete the landscape along the front side of it. It's so cute! I planted some red gnome dogwoods and echinaceas. The dogwoods should get pretty big. I bought the smallest ones available since everything else has taken off so much. I can't wait for them to grow- exciting. What do you think about the pattern of the fence?

What was I thinking?

Minneapolis has been rainy and cold the past few days. However, it really screwed up my staining last weekend. Let me rephrase that- I screwed up the staining last weekend. So I don't know if I posted about this yet, but I decided to sand the last unrefinished baseboard in the dining room, the archway leading into it, the fireplace and the window next to it. Yeah- quite a bit of work but I am definitely a pro at this point, not to toot my own horn or anything (toot).

I stained all of the woodwork and it typically needs to dry about 6-8 hours in good drying condition and 24 hours in cold or damp weather. I had a few drinks with some friends last night, came home at 10:00pm and decided to put the first coat of poly on before bed. It's not horrible but in some places alot of the stain came off and it's streaky. Shit. Now I have to resand those areas. I am so bummed. No more working after drinking! Here are some before pictures of the sanded area.


I'll put up some after pictures once my mistake and the poly is complete.

Check out how great our landscape is looking:



Since the weather was so bad this weekend Quentin installed a garbage disposal rather than working on the fence. However the majority of the fence is framed. We're getting there! We also have a new foster dog. His name is Simon and he is so cute. He follows me everywhere and always wants to sleep on me. He's sooo cute. Here is a photo of him with Tito and Roscoe when we we're having nice weather last week.