Facelift!

If you visted today, you may notice that I'd been changing up the fonts/backgrounds/etc. and pretty much just playing with the whole layout. I was using a great template from LeeLou Blogs but the template was going to expire. So, I had to search and search for something I liked better. Finally found some options I liked on Shabby Blogs so a huge shout out and thanks to them! I might still be playing with the title to see if I can jazz it up a bit, but for now, here's the new look.

Start Spreading the News

We are officially halfway through my pregnancy! There's lots of excitement that comes with the 20 week mark. We're busy working on the baby's room, tackling the daunting task of choosing a stroller and I have spent some serious time in the Destination Maternity fitting room.

One of the most exciting moments in this pregnancy (so far!) has been telling our families that we were expecting. I captured the moments on video and have been playing around with some editing programs. I made this video using Microsoft Movie Maker.

To tell my parents, we gave each of them an impromptu present. Each grandparent opened up a book; Just Grandma and Me and Just Grandpa and Me from the Little Critter collection, a favorite when I was a kid. To tell Scott's parents, we surprised them with a decorative sign for Nancy's "family photo wall" that said "The best parents get promoted to grandparents." Each family had a different but wonderful reaction.

The Project That Involved 1,000 Squats

Since we moved in, we knew our fence needed some love. We put it off for two summers as we worked on other projects. We also knew that there's no way we'd tackle it next summer with a new baby so we decided to do it this fall.

Our fence is a cedar fence and it had gotten so gray and very moldy/mildewy, especially on the north facing sides. Here's a shot of it before; this picture makes it look not that bad, but it was.

We started the project by power washing it clean. Side note: power washing is amazing. Here's an action shot of a section that had been power washed (on the right) and an old, not power washed section (on the left.)

Amazing difference. When the fence was wet, it looked like it had a reddish color to it, however, once it dried, it was very light, almost like plywood. We needed to stain the fence to give it some color and protect the wood from future mold and water.

We chose Sherwin-William's Woodscapes Semi-transparent Stain in Chestnut, which is a medium brown color. We chose a semi-transparent stain because we figured it would be more forgiving as the fence aged vs. a full coverage stain. We severely underestimated the amount of stain we'd need for the project. We bought 2 gallons. Then we went back and bought 6 more. We chalk some of this up to using a paint sprayer aka the best thing ever. 

More on the sprayer. The sprayer is where the squats came in. We purchased this Homeright Finish Max Sprayer from Amazon. It was worth every single dollar we spent on it, and I already have some plans to use it on other projects. The beauty of the sprayer was that we could apply the stain with it and then I just back brushed it over the fence slats to work it in. It made the project go a million times faster, though we did have to stop to fill up the paint cup often. As for the squats...Scott got a major workout. When you use a sprayer, you have to keep it level and move it up and down, so he had to squat down to get the bottom of the fence on every other slat. Two coats worth. He was sore! I followed with the brush which involved some moderate squatting and bending!

We applied two coats of the stain (first coat Saturday afternoon, second coat Sunday morning). The second coat really brought the color out and we're thrilled with the results!

Overall, this project was easy but time consuming. Scott and I spent about 8-10 hours power washing the fence (he did the majority of it) and then the next weekend, we spent a total of probably 6-8 hours applying the two coats of stain.

Even though this is a project we hope we will never need to tackle again, at least we know we can! We've been enjoying the updated fence with the beautiful fall weather and already changing leaves in our yard. We were so tired after the project, but we felt a huge sense of accomplishment. It was definitely a rewarding DIY project!