House Prepping

There were a lot of things that I wanted for Mother's Day, and most of them involved working on the exterior of the house. Here's a VERY rough drawing of what I wanted (drawn by me and I realize you can't see it very well, but that's kind of a good thing):We had these awful, completely dated awnings (if you ever drove by, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about) over our front windows and door, so I took them off last Friday.

That's right, scrawny Natalie removed the awnings over the door and front room window by myself (though my neighbor Jasmin helped me move them to the side of the house). I felt like Wonder Woman after all that, so I started on the awning over the kitchen window, trying to get the entire front done before Chris got home from work (I didn't want him to get mad at me for doing it by myself, but if it's already done, there's nothing to get mad about!).

Anywho. My old widowed neighbor came over wondering what I was doing, which was a pretty pointless question to ask since it was obvious, but then she stated that "that's man's work" and almost pulled the precarious door awning down on her because I had loosened it in places (that was actually pretty funny).

And what about the kitchen awning? Chris came home and I was exhausted after manually loosening all of the bolts at weird, elevated angles, so he finished up Monday. He was a little mad that I didn't wait for him, but I think he was impressed I was able to do what I did. ;)

I really wanted him to get started on the arbor to go over the front door since my honeysuckle I planted last fall is started to bud, but that'll have to wait for another day. Here's his rough drawing of it:

I've gone on-line experimenting with paint colors, and this is the closest rendering I could find:

The actual paint color is called Eden Prairie or La Fonda Olive. It's deceiving because this doesn't really look green...

Closer version to what the color actually looks like in natural lighting. We even have a name for our little cottage, but more on that later!

Sigh. Lots to do when you buy a fixer-upper!