Maniacal laugh! Maniacal laugh! Maniacal laugh!*

My dad gave me a schedule for my exterior painting - the porches before winter, the house when the spring comes. So I spent two Mondays painting porches. Luckily for me, Ryan offered to help out. Not only did the job take longer than I thought (two days rather than one) but my dad said to get a wire brush to get the dirt off. To me, this means "sweeping" the porch with the wire brush. To Ryan it meant probably what my dad meant, give it a good hard scrub.

So...that became Ryan's job.

Ryan scrubbed, then I came up behind and started painting. At one point he took on the job of cutting back the grass that had grown up by the steps...good thing he did it too because he found a nice little friend. A black widow spe-i-der!* He could have died! If I had been cutting back the grass and come across any spider I would have screamed, come down with a case of shivers and gagging, and called it quits for the day. As is, Ryan secured the area and I kept painting.

Then the next week we painted the front porch, he was cutting back grass again and wouldn't you know? He found another black widow! When we finished painting, I went around to both porches and sprayed a bunch of spider killer. I could gag now just remembering the spiders.

Here are some pictures. The porches were a "beautiful" rusty red (no clue - I don't have a refined color palette like some people). You can see the wear and tear a bit.


We went with a Super Sonic Steel (or some 's' word meaning fast!)Can you feel the wind in your hair?


Side Porch Front Porch