Porch Progress

This past week was rainy and cold, so imagine my surprise when the sun came out on Saturday.  It turned out to be a gorgeous day and for some reason, I was totally wired.  I mean it-- I did two loads of laundry, washed a bunch of dishes, vacuumed the house, cleaned out our work van, and then I tackled a long overdue porch project.

Way back when we first bought our house, the porch looked like this:

Here's my sister, but if you look past her you can see the worn porch boards.

The porch was a real eye sore.  The floor boards were worn and had the remnants of old brown paint splattered on them.  The steps were definitely showing their age, warped and ugly.  Perhaps the worst thing about the porch though, was that someone, sometime, painted the cement walls two different colors and neither of them even closely resembled a natural cement color.  Yuck.

From the day we moved in, fixing up the porch was on our long to-do list.  It just wasn't at the top--I'd say it fell somewhere more in the middle.  Well, I guess we've reached the middle of the list now because the porch has really been irking me this summer.  I kept telling Hubs I wanted to do something about it and he would nod and remind me of all the other projects that need to get done.

Even so, Hubs did agree to switch out the steps for me a couple weeks ago.  We were wandering around Menards and came across a good deal on lumber. Here we are making the switch-a-roo:

He's hot stuff!

{Total side note- Hubs did this manicure for me.  He's amazing, huh?}

After we got the stairs replaced, I decided to let Hubs off the hook for a few weeks before I started hassling him about painting again (I'm so nice).  But before I could say anything--He brought the floor grinder to the house and did all the prep on the floor!  What an amazing surprise.... and the reason why I was able to prime everything on Saturday.

What's up next?  Stay tuned for the final floor/stair color- it's bold, but beautiful!

The sanded porch boards