Painting & Digging

This weekend was nice and warm- the warmest weekend we've seen this year! It hit 80 degrees both Saturday and Sunday, so that made for a nice time working outdoors. I guess the Sandhill cranes also thought it was warm enough to be active, because they flew over the neighborhood for about an hour. Here are a few more photos of the cranes:

And here is a video I shot, just so you can get a taste of how loud they can get:

While I was photographing the wildlife, Ken and his nephew, Ian, were busy digging footers. An average of 12-20" had to be dug around the perimeter of the house. Steel will eventually be laid in it. 

Here is Ian, taking the first dig

This is what it looked like after awhile...

The hole got longer and longer. And the boys grew more and more tired. That's a whole lot of earth to move...

While they dug, I had the very important job of painting the shed. We picked out what we had hoped to be the future house colors and wanted to see what it looked like in "real life". I think we saw a house with similar in St Augustine, so that's where the idea came from. 

Before pic

Paint Colors are: Sockeye, Almond, and Dive In. Coral was actually the color we were aiming for, not pink. I should have figured that with a name like "Sockeye", it would turn out to be salmon!

Before I could paint the shed, I had to pressure wash it first:

Here is a serious photo of me washing

Next, I painted the shutters pink... err, I mean salmon:

Then came the fun stuff: climbing up and down the ladder to paint the parts I couldn't reach

Ken couldn't believe how long it took for me to paint this dang shed. I painted for about 10 hours this weekend, and I'm still not 100% finished!

I forgot my paint cup, so I had to improvise

Before you think our choice of paint colors is totally wacky, check out the rest of the neighborhood:

See? The aqua may actually look pretty good against the dark green house next door!

Next came the salmon door:

Seeing that much of the color all at once confirmed we needed to repaint it- it's a real eyesore. It looks like something straight out of Miami Beach, circa 1995. I guess it's better we experimented with the shed than on the actual house!

All in all, it was a long, productive, tiring day. We arrived around 10am and didn't leave until about 9:30pm, just to return the next day and do it all over again. More photos and video to come!