Porch Project - Scraping, Sanding, Washing...

Ugh!  That's all I can say!  What a hot, sticky, miserable job to scrape all the loose paint.  About 1/2 way through, I was tempted to go in the house, snag one of my daughter's beers and burn the paint off with vile curses I hurled at it from the comfort of my air conditioned living room.  But alas, that will not work in this universe (I'm totally putting in a request for that super power), so I persevered, urged on by the constant mosquito strafing and finished it up.

After I finished scraping, I gave the whole porch a light sanding with a medium grade sanding sponge, switching up when the sandpaper seemed gummed up (it took three altogether).  Once that job was done, which seemed like a walk in the park compared with the scraping, I swept up all the debris and got ready for the next step.  By getting ready, I mean getting a hoagie for lunch and watching an hour of HGTV in the air conditioning.

After dragging myself  eagerly returning to work, I filled a bucket with warm water and a healthy squirt of the blue dishwashing detergent preferred by oily penguins and started to work scrubbing the woodwork down.  Up until this point, I was just sweaty with decorative paint chips plastered to my cleavage (and in my bra as I later discovered), but as filthy nasty water showered down on me I moved into a whole new area of funk.  10 years of dirt and whatever all loosened up, I then turned my hose on the wood and got it all rinsed until no more suds were seen.

Since I got the wood pretty saturated, I decided to wait until tomorrow to start painting.  I went inside, got a nice long hot bath and took my daughters out for dinner at Kraftwork in the Northern Liberties section of Philly.  If you're ever in Philly, you MUST go to this place:  great beers, wonderful food in a great atmosphere.  Shameless Philly plug finished.

Oh one thing I have to replace is my house numbers.  Even though I tried to very carefully remove them so I could put them back (not that they are exceptional or anything - just didn't think about replacing them), this is what happened:

Poor little tiny number one.  He used to be big, but snapped right in half and then some.  Oh horrors... now I will have to find some on the intertubz that appeal to me.  Darn.

Next up... Painting!  But now it is time to feed my kitties before they eat my soft bits.