Remodeling in the Pacific Northwest

Today was a northwest kind of day: sunny for an hour, torrential downpour for 20 minutes, sunny for another hour, followed by hail for 15 minutes. And so on throughout the day. For the next month Mike and I are on crunch time for the siding, so it was particularly irritating to have to run all the tools inside out of the rain every hour. Despite that, we did make some progress. Siding continues to go up on the front of the house, and today I removed paint from the siding that we plan on keeping. We broke out the "Paint Shaver Pro" by American International Tool... what a timesaver! That thing is amazing. You can see our progress in today's photos. During the rainy period I also attempted to make zucchini bread with the surplus from our garden. In short, it was a failure. I got the recipe off the internet and I cannot recommend it - does anyone have a zucchini bread recipe to share?

And so we begin...

We're 5 years into our relationship, 3 years into our home remodel and two weeks into our marriage. So far things are going well. Now that the party planning is complete, the wedding gifts are put away and the thank-you notes (while not yet sent) are in progress, my lovely stitch-n-bitchin ladies have convinced Mike and me to begin blogging. However, it is very unlikely that I'll be able to pull Mike away from one of his projects to actually type, so I'll be speaking for the both of us. As I write, Mike is nailing the first pieces of siding onto the house. We've been the black tar paper house for over a year now, and I'm looking forward to soon becoming the lovely orange house on the corner that we were always meant to be. Our old neighbors stopped by the house today and pointedly questioned why we were not yet done. A chuckle, a smile and a friendly reminder that we work full-time jobs was all that I could give in the way of a response.