The weather has been getting colder each day, and we had the second snow last week. The mornings have been dark, wet, and cold, making it a real pain to get up. So when I woke up on Sunday to bright sunshine through the bedroom window, I was happy and felt so pumped to be outside. Roxie and Charlie must have thought the same, because they came to me at 7 AM begging to be let out! So we all (except Slav) had breakfast super early and headed out for a play.
It was the first nice day after a while. Knowing that another cold snap was coming, we wanted to wrap up a few things in the yard. Slav raked all the leaves and mowed the lawn. It was a whole afternoon of work but our lawn looked super neat compared to our neighbor’s:
Most of the leaves in our backyard came from this crab apple tree. It was a good timing raking the leaves since it just shed all its leaves.
Charlie loves napping under the sun, and he always get dry leave all over in his fur. Now our boy can stay clean again!
I begged Slav to mount a pair of vintage ski on the shed to dress it up a little.
This was the shed without the skies. It was already nice, but I think the skies added some character and made it more “us”.
Aside from adding the skies, I finally painted the new 2″x4″ trims and exposed rafter and subroof. It has been 6 weeks since the roof was replaced, which left a good portion of overhang with untreated 2x4s and subroof.
I started by priming everything by hand, but soon found that it was totally a mission impossible – the plywood subroof was unfinished and rough, neither brush or roller would work.
This little portion took me almost an hour to paint with brushes – not acceptable. I had to break out my paint sprayer.
After finishing priming, I reloaded the sprayer with the brown paint I used for trims and birch tree stencil, did two thin coats from the bottom to cover the plywood subroof, rafters and the underside of all the trims. The side of the trims facing outside got two coats of bronze paint, which we used on the gutter, trims, and fascia of the main house.
With the help of the paint sprayer, I was able to finish both sides of the shed in an hour and half, including the time to clean the sprayer between primer and paint.
At this point, I decided to continue painting the back of the shed brown as well. The backside of the shed was painted green to match the color of the compost bins. However, the green exterior paint we used does not have as good coverage. The compost bins have since relocated, and the green wall by itself just looked odd.
I continued to spray away. In less than 15 minutes, the shed painting marathon was (thank god) finally done!
When we picked the paint colors for the shed, we had no idea that it would too get a new roof. Now it did, I am so glad that the color of the shed fits well with the roof and trims – the shed and the house now look like they are intentionally designed to echo each other, a happy coincidence I’d say.
With the yard cleared and the shed completely finished, we kicked back and enjoyed an lovely evening outside with a big bonfire. Our DIY solar chandelier looks so spooky against the naked branches! Happy Halloween, everyone!
Leave a comment