Lisa and I spent Saturday and Sunday on our front porch. Alas, not in rockers. More like off our rockers.
Saturday began with the ceremonial Removal of the Cruddy Outdoor Carpet, that green plastic thing that used to cover our porch. No more! Now the two-inch gap in the flooring in front of the old front door and the six inch wide strip of dry rot along the far end of the porch are out in the open! Oy.
We chose to go ahead and paint the walls and old front door first, rather than continue to look at primer spots. We began by painting the porch walls and door, and amazingly, the paint that Lisa and her mom got from Lowe’s actually matched the old paint on the walls. When we were done, I couldn’t tell the patched and repainted parts from the untouched parts around them.
We also cleaned a ton of trim and upper wall that had been allowed, in the shade of the overgrown front trees, to mildew. And I nailed in a patch to replace the missing wood in front of the doorjamb. We also bought a replacement carpet (much as I would love to just paint the exposed flooring, I don’t think sheet plywood is anyone’s idea of House Beautiful), though we didn’t get to install it.
In fact, besides some lawnwork and weeding, we didn’t get to do anything else at all. As we collapsed exhausted on our sofas late Sunday afternoon, accompanied by dogs who were ecstatic that we were finally paying them some attention, I think I muttered something about taking a two day vacation to make up for the lost weekend. But I can’t be sure, as I was already asleep.