86'n It

Allow me to set the scene:
It's 10:35 pm on a chilly Sunday night. The street is eerily quiet save for the violent rustling of the oak trees. I'm home alone with my two year old daughter. Suddenly, the doorbell rings. It is two strangers I met on the internet...

And they are just as cool as I thought they would be!

Chris and Meryl from Picardy Project stopped by our house on their Renovation Road Trip to help us with a project. Meryl is funny, talkative and SO easy to talk to. Chris is quieter, thoughtful, nice, and hardworking. (Reminds me a little of Marc and I actually!)


The project we picked was the siding of the back porch wall. It had some tricky cuts and trickier wedging-board-in issues. (We ended up not going with the original idea of the wood flooring on the wall, because we couldn't find it reasonably priced. German (aka Dutch, aka cove lap) siding was cheaper AND matched the rest of the house. We did do a little detail at the top to match the detail of the attic venting area.)

I told Meryl I was going to pay her back for all the "back of Chris" photos she posts. So here you go, project started, photo of the back of Meryl! Ha!



I must confess, I did a lot of standing around and handing of tools while Chris and Meryl worked. In retrospect, I should not have picked a project that required 60% of the work to be completed while standing on a ladder (a pregnancy no-no) and could easily be handled by two people. DOH! (Note: Marc had to work and couldn't get out of it. Bad timing.)

I did serve as Chief Pest Remover. We had the screen door propped open and while the mosquitoes have died down (yea!), I had to relocate a two bees and a wasp from the porch. Plus, (drumroll please) ANOTHER SNAKE from the basement. Ugh. The vibrating from the compressor rattled a +18" long garter snake awake and looking for a quieter place to chill. I picked OUTSIDE near the neighbor's cat. Hee hee.

• Order glass for window (frosted, insulated) (DONE!)
• Install remaining door trim on 2 windows
• Install base trim on 2 walls
• Caulk and fill nail holes (DONE!)
• Paint!

And I'm beyond motivated to finish this this week. I hurried this morning to get my work-work done, so I can start. Nothing like getting 80% of a project done FOR ME by amazing people to make me kick it into gear to do the remaining 20%.

Check out Meryl's post here about our project, 

which includes several funny photos of Franca "helping": 

(I think that this little "Renovating with Kids" experience may have motivated Chris and Meryl to finish any renovations BEFORE having kids! Sorry potential Grandparents.)