Exterior work

The outside of our house hasn't had much attention with everything going on in the inside. But we didn't want out neighbors getting scared that we weren't going to improve the property values of the neighborhood, so it was time to give some attention to the outside.

I cut the lawn, with a  weed whacker, because we don't have a lawn mower easily accessible yet. That was interesting. Not too shabby though in the end, if not the evenest thing ever. I also de-weeded in front of the house.

We power washed the whole front of the house in preparation for priming and painting (that's coming soon.) I'm officially addicted to power washing. Man, is is fun! (Side note: power washing a cloth paint roller is the coolest thing ever. You get it in this one perfect position and it spins ridiculously fast, not only cleaning itself but also drying itself; it ends up looking like Hobbes when he comes out of the dryer.) 

We also needed to get rid of the two giant bushes in the front yard, which were both ugly and inconvenient:

 We cut off the branches, and then used truck power to pull them out:

 Boy did that save some sweat. I love our truck. Ah, look! Our yard just got bigger! :)

I also took off the badly-applied tile work on our stoop. It's ugly now, but at least it's not a lawsuit waiting to happen (the tile was chipping and uneven and unstable). We found some more charming infestations underneath the tile;

The larvae looked like rice, there were so many.  

There was also a really gorgeous spider I just had to include (I love spiders):

When we took off the shutters to power wash the house, we disturbed three hornets' nests. I don't have pictures of that because we were too busy running for our lives. :) We used two full cans of hornet-killer spray. There are still a few stubborn ones buzzing around... we'll have to think of a way to tell them they're permanently unwelcome. 

We've been discussing colors for the outside... we're fairly limited by the colors of exterior paint we find at the dump, but we really like some of the shades we've gotten so far. The siding will be just a nice tan, but we're still thinking through options for the shutters and door. Painting starts soon, so stay tuned! :)