Staycation repair-cation

This week we've been on vacation from work.

Paying work, that is.

Instead of a relaxing vacation, it's been a home repair-cation. Right now, we have a 3 ft square hole in the bathroom floor where the toilet usually is. The toilet is in the bathtub. And today, we brought home 17 gallons of exterior paint and primer to repaint our house. I have hated the color of the siding of our house since we bought it, but never seemed to "get around to" repainting it.  For some reason, it's striped, too. It's dark brown siding of some sort (not the usual vinyl or horizontal kind) with boards over the seams painted white. We're painting it all one color. A lighter color, too, so that it won't get so hot in our house.

Tonight we're going to start with the primer on one side, at least. We can work on the rest over the weekend.

This evening, I spent a lot of time in the too-neglected front yard. We have too many trees for grass to grow, and it just gets forgotten. I hate how it looked, but haven't had much opportunity to do something about it. So I made time for it. I did some raking, a lot of pruning, and a lot of trimming with the electric hedge trimmer. I even used the tree trimmer blade-on-a-long-handle thingy to cut off several low limbs that needed to be thinned out. It already looks like a new yard!
It will need more raking, and there are some limbs that still need to be carried to the curb, but the improvement is incredible. I even found a few patches of grass I didn't know existed! 

I had to stop, though. I accidentally cut through the extension cord with the electric trimmer. It just stopped working, and I could NOT figure out why. I felt the gash in the cord and saw what happened.

Oops.

We have gotten some enjoyment out of our vacation, though. We've been staying up too late and sleeping in. Yesterday Sophie even slept until noon! Although it was 2:00 a.m. before she fell asleep last night. We'll have to get her back on a regular sleep schedule this weekend or Monday will be torture!

Break time over - time to go put primer on the house! I had it tinted the same color we're painting so it won't look so bad. Should also make it easier to cover the dark brown.

This is the back of the house - this shows the brown siding we're painting.