… home improvements, that is.

After getting up before dawn to do a job at a fast food place (what a pain) I faced a whole weekend of working my ass off.

See, my landlord’s been promising to paint this house since I moved in. Seven years ago.

It’s ugly and grey and peeling so the previous uglier red paint shows through. Nice, huh? I got my hopes up last year when he bought the paint, but that was just silly. He has to talk about things for a year or two before he actually does them.

But he promised that this would be the prep weekend, and if I wanted my house painted, I had to clear out things from around the outside.

Oh, crap.

The wood pile was still along the side of the house, seasoning until I can split it. And it wasn’t stacked neatly so we could get around it either. Oh no, I tossed it in there any old way.

So bright and early (which was somewhat after the crack of dawn) found me moving my wood pile.

What was this…

…is now all over the lawn, because there sure wasn’t any point to stacking it neatly this time.

But I got everything cleared, and Marv brought over his pressure washer.

I love the pressure washer. I want to marry the pressure washer. It’s huge and noisy and makes a terrible mess, but things get so fantastically clean with the pressure washer. I found myself getting sidetracked by cleaning the bricks on the outside of the chimney, or powering off the green scum in the puddle that broke my leg.

I discovered the MAN’s way of washing windows. Sadly, after I was done with that, I also discovered that the little vent holes at the bottom of the windows should probably be stopped up first, but it was so much fun that I haven’t even kicked myself for it yet. I just wish that I could bring that thing in the house to clean my shower with, but that would probably fall slightly on the overkill side of the spectrum.

The pressure washer was so satisfying. I do love to pick, and there’s nothing better than peeling long strips of paint off the garage door with gas-powered tools. Of course, my arms are completely rubber, I ended up with the world’s worst case of giant grey-blue dandruff, and my house now looks like it has advanced mange, but it’s clean!

Here’s Marv starting on the front of the house. The shutters will go back up minus the stupid little hearts. This isn’t the eighties, people!

My coworker, friend, landlord, hunting partner, and today, fellow giant dandruff sufferer. But Connie brought us pizza, which made at least an hour of it worthwhile.We’ll see if I’m still so enthused about the project tomorrow when I can’t reach my feet.