gutters

Hero and I love getting projects done at our house. 

We were really looking forward to painting every inch of the exterior of our house - minus the bricks and doors and windows. We had a plan to buy a super nifty sprayer from Harbor Freight and go to town.

But like most projects where I tend to see only the finished result, there was so. much. prep. work.

Some things just have to happen first if you are going to have a great ending. It is so tempting to go right for the end result steps, but if you skip the beginning prep stuff, you will never have that awesome end result. Really.

Here is what I am talking about outside:

This is right up front and center - over the front porch. This gutter leaked every time it rained right onto anyone's head that happened to be coming or going in the front door. And it dripped in the winter time, creating a super little ice rink on the step.

It's the little things that make us crazy.

But this actually turned out to be a bigger little thing than we anticipated.

Once Hero got all up in there, there were many secrets to be discovered.

Not the "Come see - I found treasure!" kind of secrets.

The "Ummm, this is bad" kind of  secrets.

We knew the boards had to be rotting - the whole gutter thing was all wrong. But we were hoping it was just the facing boards:

But when those were pulled off, more rotting boards were hiding underneath. And ants. The big carpenter ants that love rotting wood.

How lovely.

(No photos of the ants - take my word for it please. As soon as we discovered them, the camera went out the window. We were all about getting those things DEAD.)

All of this had to come off. 

Hero took everything off that was gross. And then replaced it all with nice new wood.

So much better knowing it's all fresh and clean under there. Hero threw some new gutters up and fixed that whole leaking problem.

Getting closer to painting!