Josh's Birthday!

Josh's Birthday was on the 9th.  He is *redacted* years old, and I think we celebrated in style!

The Saturday before his birthday we went out to dinner at one of Josh's favorite places, The Ram, and enjoyed some delicious beer, food, and watched the Huskies do worse against the Ducks than the Cougs.  Its unfortunate though, because when the Ducks play the Huskies is the ONLY time you will ever catch us rooting for the Huskies.  After that we went to our local dive bar, the Star Lake Tavern.  Its has old office chairs, pool tables, darts, a view of the Star Lake in the day time, and an obese beagle.  We love it.  On his actual birthday we met up with a couple of friends in Seattle and watched a screening of a ski movie by Powderwhore.  The movie was fun to watch and it got us both pumped up for the ski season!

But, the highlight had to be his present.  I was a bit skeptical at first, but now that I see it in action, it is pretty cool.

That is a John Deere 4010J Traveling Yard Sprinkler.  They don't sell them anymore so I had my first ebay bidding war to bring it home for him.  Happy Birthday Josh!

Leonard and Josh

Watching Josh and Leonard play is one of my favorite things to do.  They chase each other around the yard like wild animals and it brings a smile to my face every single time. They usually start with a little wrestling.

Leonard is definitely biting Josh here, but Leonard never hurts him, its just part of the game!

Then Leonard takes off!

 The goal for Leonard to get as close as possible to Josh without getting caught.

 Getting Tired...

Its extra funny to watch, because Leonard does not play with me like this.  This is definitely a Leonard and Josh activity.  I've been trying to get the perfect picture for a long time, and these are the closest I've come so far.  But, I still don't think this really captures what I'm after.  Here is a video so you can see what I get to see!

Painting Progress

This has been the summer of painting the house.  At first it seemed easy.  pressure wash it, spray it, done.  See look - here is me thinking there is fun to be had in this project. 

We were very wrong.  What we thought was "house painting" became an "exterior restoration".  We quickly realized that our home had two coats of paints, none newer than 1975, and no primer anywhere.

First Josh pressure washed it.  The paint flew off the house, not everywhere, but enough to terrify us.  Wasn't paint supposed to stay on the siding?  We spent a full afternoon cleaning up the unexpected paint chips from the flower beds.  Ok - this means we have to scrape it.

We started scraping and realized that the pressure washer didn't even come close to removing everything.  Entire pieces of siding were stripped down to bare wood.  But not all of the paint would come off, leaving very clear defining lines between bare wood and painted sections.  We were lamenting this fact to a few friends when someone we hadn't met piped up and told us we should sand the house too.  It would make it less obvious where we had been unable to remove the old paint.  Damn - this means we have to sand it.

So we scraped, and sanded the entire house.  Everything that could be reached from the ground, I did.  Everything that could be reached from the scaffold, including every single tail, Josh did.

After it was scraped and sanded we decided we should spot prime it.  I decided to tackle that project while Josh redid the trim. 

Can you see the primer on Leonard's head?   A little later he managed to give himself a skunk stripe.  Its extra funny because I threatened to do it earlier in the day!  We had to take him to the groomer to get that off.

So, while I put primer on every spot of bare wood, Josh restored the trim around the windows and doors.

We also decided to paint the front trim white, before we painted the rest of the house.  This was a wonderful idea!  Of course, hindsight being 20/20, why did we only think to do this for the front?  As with most things we do, Leonard helped.

Then, finally, after longer than I really want to admit, it was time to paint.  We were discussing this with my Papa when he told us that back brushing makes it look so much better.  I was devastated, no more steps!  No more tools I want it to be done!!  But, Papa had the tools, and he had just painted his house and it looked so good...shoot...now I have to follow Josh and back brush.

 

Our plan was to prime the entire house on Saturday, and spray the color on Sunday.  We woke up on Saturday morning and it was raining.  OMG.  Can we catch a break?  It was a light rain so we decided to prep anyway and hope it went away.

Taping everything off...

 

Putting plastic down...

The primer layer!  Maybe we could just leave it white?

Josh after the primer layer.  Hooray for masks!

 

 

The sprayer setup.  We have a very kind coworker of Josh's to thank for the loan of the sprayer.  THANK YOU!

The man in action.

Go-go gadget back brush!

Taking off the tape!

Josh after the color layer.

Yay!

The weather cleared up, and we were able to prime and spray our entire house!  It looks fantastic!  We are so happy to be done, and we are very proud of ourselves for accomplishing this Herculean task.  Now, that said, we still have to paint the door and do a 2nd coat on the back trim.  So, I will save the final reveal until then...