Monday, June 11, 2012

git-r-done weekend

Meet our redneck back porch.


Let's point out of all the short-comings:


Well, for one thing, the gap between the porch floor and the cement ground is wide open. Why is there not any sort of lattice or something to cover this area up? Additionally, why is there a cinder block right there (Dan)? There is no screen door, the house is literally covered in dirt, the porch needs painting, the chairs need to be re-painted and they need new (un-ripped) cushions. The door is scratched and beat up, the light doesn't even have a glass enclosure, and we need some new, more lively plants. 






Where does one even begin when faced with this many "to-do" items on such a tiny little porch? I'm not going to lie to you dear readers, I started by trapping my husband in the house with no means of escaping. This forced him to fix the old screen door. 

I didn't "trap" him per se, I just left all day with the only vehicle (out of 4, and a motorcycle) that was working. Why yes, we must be rednecks with that many vehicles. Anyway, rather than sit on the couch all day for the second day in a row, he decided to "have at it" with the screen door. 


Now, as I'd like to point out, there is no real bottom to that door. Bruno kicked it out years ago... So we improvised and added vinyl (and now old screen) to create a "doggy door". Does it still look bad? Yeah... definitely. Are the other screen portions still vulnerable to Bruno kicking and tearing? Why yes, so funny that you mentioned it! 

At Home Depot on Saturday, Dan and I had a battle royale about the state of this screen door. Basically, he wants to add pet screen to the outside of the door by simply screwing it on. I would prefer a more refined look. So there was an argument about getting a new door all together, followed by an argument about why he couldn't just make a new screen with the pet screen rather than screwing it on and making it look so bad. His response?

"Well it all looks terrible out there anyway, so why should I bother to try and make the door look nice?"

Can you see the steam coming out of my ears? So we had a feud inside the Home Depot, and then on Sunday morning I got a bucked full of soapy water with bleach, a car wash sponge and a hose. And I cleaned the house. Literally.


The right side is clean in this picture. That's how bad it really was. The floor and the banister were no better...

Floor Before
Floor After
I know it is hard to tell from the pictures, but the porch floor looks completely different, almost unrecognizable. So let's call the cleaning step 3. (Step 2, spend $75 on flowers) Step 4 was to prime the old chairs, and find a new purpose for the beat up, ripped cushions.


Check and check (look at that cute little face!) Tonight I plan on painting the primed chairs, and I bought an outdoor rug online. It's adorable, and it was pretty cheap ($50, free shipping! at outdoorrugsonly.com). Step 6 will be scrapping and then painting the deck, which will hopefully take place next weekend. 

Until then, I can only hope that our weekend has gone from "git-r-done" to "wow, we did a lot of stuff". Maybe next Monday I'll even tell you that "we accomplished a great, many things". Who knows?

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