summer projects

Remember yesterday - I said I was heading outside to do some planting? Well, before I even signed off from the blog, Mark asked me if I could help him with something. The something took the next three hours and was a ton of work - so no planting for me.

Last year we started "refreshing" the 100 year old stucco on our house - it has been done once before - about 50 years ago - give or take a couple. So it's a project whose time has defintely come! We also need to tuckpoint the chimney, so good opportunity to do that at the same time. We did the street side last year - there's a small flat roof on the second story on that side of the house, so fairly easy to get up to the peak with a ladder on the flat roof. No scaffolding required. But we knew the east and west sides of the house would need scaffolding - and we lucked out last fall when Mark found some good stuff on a going-out-of business auction. We got everything we need for a good price - and will be able to re-sell it when we're done for about the same amount most likely. (and yes, it will be heading down the road once this project is done - we do not have room to store scaffolding "just in case...")

So yesterday we took all the pieces off the trailer where they had been stored over the winter, and set it all up. We put it up on both sides of the house - Mark has to do the work when the sun isn't shining on it - so figured this way he could pretty much work whenever the mood hits - on one side or the other.

I hate heights - so it doesn't look like much fun to me - he'll still have to use a ladder to get up to the peaks on both sides. The first level is 6-7 feet off the ground. But he seems to be okay with it - the scaffolding does appear to be very steady and sturdy, so... Maybe the good news is when he's working off the top level, he can actually climb out the bedroom window on one side of the house, or the bathroom window on the other, to get on the scaffolding - better than climbing up the side of the scaffolding, for sure!

This photo with the sun shining really shows why we're doing this. The section under the small window on the left is an area Mark patched last summer - that's the color the house is supposed to be! It's very sun faded - from white to beige - and has a lot of concrete showing through where the color has worn off - and some stains. So I'm thinking it will look much nicer for us and for all our neighbors!!

Next decision is what to do with all the window and door trim - right now it's all white - which is fairly boring - LOL. I'd like to do a dark color I think - but can't decide what color. There are several older neighborhoods in Minneapolis that have this style and age house - so we'll have to do a few tours this summer and see what strikes our fancy.