Trim, Baby, Trim!

It constantly amazes me how painted trim can update the look of a house.


Doug spent Saturday turning our cracked and weathered trim into primed trim. Now the house doesn't look quite like the "handyman special" we bought.

This trim around the garage doors actually doesn't look as bad as some of the other doorways

But Doug was faster than I - he had the bad ones painted by the time I got the camera out!

I love having a handy guy around the house. 


I am thinking that perhaps white isn't the right color for our trim, though. Any ideas? We're definitely going to have a red door, but everything else is up for grabs. Dark blue? Green? Since the siding is a yellow beige, I definitely don't want yellow! Grey, maybe? 


Let me know what you think - and I'll take it under consideration!

De-plastering

The previous owners of our house had some cute ideas. One was to plaster cement "blocks" around an opening leading to a hall and the stairway.

Stain was never added to make them visible - you can just barely see the block pattern here

The fun part will be getting the plaster off the textured ceiling of the hall

Cute, but not "me". So, I am trying to remove the plaster.

My first idea was to sand it, but Doug nixed that idea. It would be very messy. And, you can just scrape off the plaster when it is wet. I went to town getting it wet and scraping it (also a very messy process, but more containable than sanding), and have so far removed three of the six surfaces. 

When they're done, I think matching sconces on each side of the opening would look nice, don't you think? And what about an archway instead of the rectangular opening?

A No-Labor Labor Day

For Labor Day weekend, my family and I went to visit my sister Debi and her family. After five hours of driving, we were exhausted, but ready for fun.

Here was the best part: I scored a dill plant and several seeds for dill, cosmos, and marigolds. Wahoo!  And I learned that if you wait until the flowers are brown and "crispy" (Debi's word), you can pull apart the flower and find the (free) seeds. How did I never know that?

Crispy is a very good description, no?

And there are the seeds!

Unfortunately, my dill plant looks a little worse for wear. Hopefully I can coax it back to life - otherwise, I will have to start the dill seeds and get that going. 

Grow, little dill plant!

So what did we do this weekend, other than play with seeds?

The family went canoeing, swimming and fishing on the reservoir...though not all at the same time. We picnicked with extended family to welcome my nephew's baby into the family. We bought pies (Veyo Pies) and thoroughly enjoyed eating them.

The kids fought...a lot...and spent many long time-outs in the corner. The boys especially were so tired. But they powered through it. And so did we.


Honestly, I loved it. The fun times were WAY more fun than the bad times were bad. I spent an entire evening being giddy with my sister. What's more fun than that?