May 16-28, 2005 - Paintapalooza!

Day One! Powerwashing (which did little) and a lot of scraping. Ooh that was a nice sound for the next few mornings at 7am...

Later that same week: Primer is on! The patch of grey in the lower left is a test to see how the color would cover. It's a bit darker than the original grey... took a while to grow on us, but now we love it!

Painting the main color. Our Ukranian/Belarussian boys did a fine job.

Main color done! Next, the red trim, foundation, windows, and porch.

Jango enjoyed supervising the painters (when he wasn't napping or eating).

Red trim (we added the top stripe on the fascia - word of the week) and darker foundation color nearing completion.

The back of the house.

We determined that the back door must be red - to match the front door!

Just in case the Russians forgot about the kittens inside (sign reads: "do not open! Cats will escape!") as they started working on painting and fixing windows. Don't know if they could even read the sign (the Russians, not the cats); regardless, no cats escaped.

Our neighbor's overly friendly cat Tammy, on the other hand, was keeping the painters company on the other side of the glass. Our neighbors always give him (yes Tammy is a boy) a spring-shave to help with fur and matting issues. The painters didn't know what to make of poor Tammy, who's 21 years young and quite spritely for his age. They kept saying "no touch! is sick! no touch!". Poor kitty!

Neil doing windows! We cleaned all the windows and storms before putting everything back together... that's 35 windows mind you... boy did our arms hurt the next day!

The porch in progress! We needed a bit of carpentry work done, as you can see.

Old and busted... replaced by new hotness!

Adding the red trim to the porch; the stairs are also primed and ready to painted.

The risers are now white....

Close up of our house numbers, before and after (we added the second red "racing stripe" - technical term of course - beneath the gutter as well as the red bit at the top of the column):

And the porch is finished! As is the whole house. It took them 10 days from start to finish.

Wet sign, too. It rained two days AFTER they finished. Whew!

We had a twine-cutting ceremony, with our upstairs neighbor Christine as a witness.

Close up of somebody's hands....

Our first steps up to our "new" porch!

Sandy, attracted to shiney objects, admires the porch floor. Neil: "It really IS dry!"

Evanston Gothic...

Well, that's all for now. Thanks for visiting "Home Improvement 101"...and be sure to stay tuned for Garden Improvement, aka "Gardening For Geeks and Hand Models", coming this summer! :)