Role Reversal

So I had to chuckle to myself the other night.  Snow had melted (don't worry, we got more after these pictures) and it had left us with a lawn littered with debris.  Turns out we didn't do as thorough of a job as we should have last fall when the leaves were falling.  There were piles of leaves in our boulevard and the flower beds were covered in leaves, over a foot deep in some spots.  Christmas lights were still dangling from the eaves.  And yes, if you look closely, that is an owl wearing a Santa hat on our front door.  The turquoise Christmas tree is still standing strong, too.

 Seriously, our house had the exact opposite of "curb appeal" - I'm thinking it would have been more accurately dubbed "gutter appeal."  Time to clean 'er up.  Or take photos while Brent gets it cleaned up!  Kidding, I put the camera down to help a little bit.  Thankfully, the kids are great helpers and love chipping in.

 And since we couldn't find any of Owen's shorts from last summer, Brent made him some.  I'm still trying to convince him to bring the length up a little bit.  Think...Davey Dukes.

 Turns out, after we raked up the garbage, there was actually green plant material beneath!

 Wow - kind of hard to tell, but this next photo is actually the "after."  Looks like we still have a little work to do.

 Then I was looking at my flower boxes, thinking they could really use a new coat of paint.

 I used my orbital sander (kind of my new best friend after that disaster of a project I call patio furniture refinishing) to sand off all the flaking paint.

 A few things to note here:  1.  That is a paint brush in my back pocket and I honestly don't even know why it's there.  Kind of looks like a rabbit tail though.  2.  Do not zoom in on my shapely legs, those babies haven't seen the sun or a razor since last October.  Only halfway kidding about the razor part.

 And then this is about the time that I started laughing to myself, because as I was outside in the yard, busting my hump, Brent was inside making dinner for the fam while simultaneously doing yoga.  Hence the role reversal.  I love him even more for it though.  You can't blame a man for wanting healthy, flexible joints!

 Had to hand sand to get into the grooves.

 Once sanding was complete, I used the same primer I use for every project to give the flower boxes a good base so the topcoat of paint would adhere well.

 After priming, there were still lots of little gaps where the wood had shrunk and moved with age.  Hmmmm...a lot like humans.

 I filled all the gaps with the caulk gun while Brent followed behind me and smoothed the caulk out.  Don't worry, his yoga session was complete.  He was cussing like a sailor as he followed me though because apparently I was using wayyyy too much caulk and it was making it difficult for him to smooth it out.

 After the caulk dried, I put two coats of our white exterior semi-gloss trim paint over top.  This shouldn't be a shocker, but flower boxes get hit with a lot of water, since the plants within need water ever 1-3 days.  So I'm not surprised that they need to be sanded and repainted every few years.

 Well there, that's looking a little better!

These small scale projects are what we tend to work on during the weekdays after work.  Not too time consuming and can be complete in a few hours.  We save the weekends for bigger, more substantial stuff...and we can't wait to share with you what we have been building for the last two weekends!!

Now we just have to sit back and wait until about mid-May, which is when we can actually plant stuff in them!