Dealing with the home owner’s association this week has left me with some ideas for improvement. We have a porch on the front of the house that is one of the biggest reasons we bought the house. Unfortunately with our time and money we’ve been having a hard time getting everything up kept  properly. The deck railing needs to be sanded and repainted.  I’m wondering if we can just use a power washer to remove the old paint. It was once beautiful but 8 years and it’s chipped and flaking. The hard part is going to be the spindles. Sanding those is going to be a real nightmare. The little grooves and fidgety spots definitely need more than just a power washing. We would have to repaint it white but there needs to be a more weather proof paint right?

Then again we had a neighbor redo all of his porch in the new decking material that needs very minimal upkeep (read a wash down). With our busy life I’m thinking that might be the better way to go. Have you used the new decking material? My parents had even used this at their old house for replacing their decks. It was nice to not have to worry about splinters when running across the deck. I’m just unsure about the cost. If we had our way we’d have moved out of this house before Rachael was born but with the housing market in the tank we wouldn’t get enough out of the house to put us a head. We would still need to do the work on the decks before we could move anyways. What would your choice be? Would you just sand and repaint in hopes that the housing market would go back up or would you bite the bullet and use the new decking material?

Can you see the wear on the decking? It’s not pretty right? The back deck looks fine but it has some spots where the nails are popping. Definitely could use a new job done but we’d have to hire a contractor for that since its a second story deck.

A couple weeks ago I posted a photo of a cake we were making for a friends wedding. Here is what we came up with. The bride asked for us to take off the ribbons.

Did you notice the lack of posts? Yeah I’ve been depressed. Charlie started school on Thursday. I was okay with him going to school. I was okay with him being in the big public school. I was not okay with him going on the bus. I mean my little man is little and he’s getting on the big school bus. Each day has been okay as he’s quickly ran up the stairs and jumped in his seat. This morning he was ready to leave without so much as a hug. Not cool! The only upside is Ray still gives me tons of hugs and kisses and loves the few hours of quiet that we have each morning.